Patent ID: 7124059

Claim:
A method of managing maintenance activities for at least one item of equipment, the method comprising: determining a configuration maintenance requirements for maintaining a target configuration of an item of equipment; including establishing the target configuration of the item of equipment based on a design objective of the item of equipment, wherein the design objective includes safety, reliability, and performance, or a combination thereof; evaluating an actual configuration of the item of equipment; determining if the actual configuration complies with the target configuration; determining a predictive maintenance requirements for the item of equipment based on a longevity estimate, a probability of failure, a financial analysis, or a combination thereof; planning for the availability of at least one of resources and a component for performing maintenance consistent with the configuration maintenance requirements and the predictive maintenance requirement; including planning an upgrade requirement for upgrading the actual configuration to the target configuration if the actual configuration is noncompliant; and coordinating the upgrade requirement and the predictive maintenance requirement into a combined maintenance schedule for both the upgrade requirement and the predictive maintenance requirement.