In view of the high complexity of the objective world, an economic dependence between subsystems(paired and unpaired) is proposed, and then the maintenance cost and time under different economic dependences are formulated in a simple and consistent manner. Selective maintenance problem under economic dependence(EDSMP) is presented based on a series–parallel system in this paper. A case study shows that the system reliability is promoted to a certain extent, which can validate the validity of the EDSMP model. The influence of the ratio of set-up cost on system performance is mainly discussed under different economic dependences. Several existing improvements of classical exhaust algorithm are further modified to solve a large sized EDSMP rapidly. Experimental results illustrate that these improvements can reduce CPU time significantly.Furthermore the contribution of each improvement is defined here, and then their contributions are compared thoroughly. In view of the high complexity of the objective world, an economic dependence between subsystems (paired and unpaired) is proposed, and then the maintenance cost and time under different economic dependences are formulated in a simple and consistent manner. (EDSMP) is presented based on a series-parallel system in this paper. A case study shows that the system reliability is promoted to a certain extent, which can validate the validity of the EDSMP model. The influence of the ratio of set-up Several existing improvements of classical exhaust algorithm are further modified to solve a large sized EDSMP rapidly. Experimental results illustrate that these improvements can reduce CPU time significantly. Future of the contribution of each improvement is defined here, and then their contributions are compared thoroughly.