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ARS Home » Research » Research Project #443508

Research Project: Life Cycle Analysis of Equipment

Location: Operations

Project Number: 3022-32000-016-021-A
Project Type: Cooperative Agreement

Start Date: Sep 1, 2023
End Date: Aug 31, 2025

Objective:
(1) Develop a model(s) to estimate the life cycle of the larger pieces of equipment for the ARS that will allow them to more accurately estimate annual capital expenditures for their annual budgets. (2) Provide estimated life cycles for the equipment for ARS. (3) Provide justification of the life cycles for the equipment for ARS.

Approach:
(1) Principal investigator (PI) will use a Monte Carlo Simulation(s) to model the probability of different outcomes on the life cycle of the equipment based on 1,000 trials. From this analysis, the PI will obtain an estimated range of each piece of equipment’s useful life as well as the percentage of failure in each year during the trials. This will allow ARS personnel to easily estimate the best time to replace each piece of equipment. (2) From the sample collected in the Monte Carlo Simulation(s), the PI will estimate logistic regression model(s) based on each class of equipment (e.g., 3, 5, 10-year equipment) to predict the probability of failure of each piece of equipment. (3) Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) will be followed in estimating the useful life of the equipment. (4) The model will be robust to data based on the usage rate of the equipment.