Abstract:In view of the growing demand for highway operation and maintenance to improve quality and improve the ability to deal with complex problems, it is pointed out that highway operation and maintenance should be regarded as system optimization. Therefore, a series of deduction is discussed and given for the system optimization, including the information and indicator set, knowledge and standard, function and information, short loop and long loop, system-related information, connected information group, and the main function of the unboundedness, complication, efficiency and feedback loop for system optimization. And then these conclusions are successfully applied in solving practical problems, which have the promotional value in the highway operation and maintenance.