Methods and apparatus are provided for determining a lowest total cost maintenance plan. The method comprises receiving a sequence of maintenance actions in an order of a waiting time for each maintenance action, wherein one of the maintenance actions is likely to repair the failure mode. Each maintenance action has an associated cost equal to a waiting time cost, an execution time cost and a material cost, wherein the waiting time of each maintenance action is the time required to requisition and receive material required to perform the maintenance action. The method also constructs a maintenance plan comprising a primary requisition and a secondary requisition by assigning each of the sequence of maintenance actions to one of the primary and secondary requisition.