Patent ID: 8219276

Claim:
A method to aid in maintaining a system, the method being implemented by a maintenance computer, the system comprising a set of networked elements, said networked elements comprising physical items including at least one of equipment and links, the system being configured into one or more subsets of networked elements E i , each of said one or more subsets of networked elements E i being associated with a probability of failure P i , wherein the method comprises the steps of: calculating a first value T i for each of said one or more subsets of networked elements E i , the first value T i comprising an estimation of a maintenance time related to a repair of said one or more subsets of networked elements E i ; calculating a second value F i for each of said one or more subsets of networked elements E i , the second value F i calculated as a function of the estimation of the maintenance time T i related to the repair of said one or more subsets of networked elements E i and the probability of failure P i of said one or more subsets of networked elements E i , wherein F i is a ratio between the probablility of failure of the subset of networked elements E i and the first value T i calculated for the subset of networked elements E i ; and sorting said one or more subsets of networked elements E i in order of decreasing second value F i .