A cost-based selective maintenance decision-making method was presented.The purpose of this method was to find an optimal choice of maintenance actions to be performed on a selected group of machines for manufacturing systems.The arithmetic reduction of intensity model was introduced to describe the influence on machine failure intensity by different maintenance actions (preventive maintenance,minimal repair and overhaul).In the meantime,a resolution algorithm combining the greedy heuristic rules with genetic algorithm was provided.Finally,a case study of the maintenance decision-making problem of automobile workshop was given.Furthermore,the case study demonstrates the practicability of this method.