Managing the Economic Replacement of an Operational Vehicles:A Heuristic Decision Model

A heuristic decision model for the replacement of an operational vehicle was developed. The proposed model is based on analysingan economic measures incorporating the most important factors such as: operation and maintenance costs, salvage values, depreciation, cost of capital, and most importantly, unavailability costs to reflect the hidden off-road vehicle costs. Parameterization of life-cycle costs, classification of existing vehicles, and vehicle priority factors were demonstrated in a case study for the Royal Air Force vehicles fleet. It is worth mentioning that the proposed heuristic is a beneficial tool in replacement decision and in making trade-off analysis among viable replacement strategies.