Integrated maintenance and production decision for k-out-of-n system equipment with attenuation of product quality

Equipment reliability significantly impacts productivity, and in order to obtain high equipment reliability and productivity, maintenance and production decision should be made simultaneously to keep manufacturing system healthy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the joint optimization of equipment maintenance and production decision for k-out-of-n system equipment with attenuation of product quality and to explore the impact of maintenance on the production and cost control for manufacturers.

A multi-period Markov chain model for k-out-of-n system equipment is set up based on the assumption that the deterioration of equipment is a pure birth process. Then, the maintenance cost, setup cost, inventory holding cost, shortage cost, production cost and the quality cost are analyzed with the uncertain demand and the attenuation of product quality stemmed from equipment deterioration. The total lowest cost per unit time and its specific calculation method are presented. Finally, the robustness and flexibility of the method are verified by a numerical example and the effects of equipment deterioration intensity and attenuation of product quality are analyzed.

The result shows that the joint decision model could not only satisfy the uncertain demand with low cost and strong robustness but also make the output products high quality level. In addition, the attenuation of product quality would influence the equipment maintenance and production decision and leads to the production waste and increases the operation cost greatly.

Implications derived from this study can help production maintenance managers and reliability engineers adequately select maintenance policy to improve the equipment efficiency and productivity with high quality level at a relatively low cost.