Impact of the use-based maintenance policy on the performance of cellular manufacturing systems

Abstract

In this paper, a multi-objective integer programming approach is developed to investigate the impact of the use-based preventive maintenance (UPM) policy on the performance of the cellular manufacturing system (CMS). Under the UPM policy a maintenance schedule is established which provides for the performance of preventive maintenance (PM) only after a predetermined number of operating hours of machine use. This research indicates how PM and failure repair (FR) actions affect the effective availability of the machines and accordingly the machine and inter/intra-cell material handling costs under the UPM policy. The objective is to minimise the machine cost, inter- and intra-cell material handling and PM/FR costs. The proposed model is solved by an interactive fuzzy programming (IFP) approach to determine the best compromise solution from the decision maker point of view. IFP assumes that each objective function has a fuzzy goal and focuses on minimising the worst upper bound to obtain an efficient solution which is close to the best lower bound of each objective function. Compromise solutions are prioritised by two efficiency criteria, i.e. grouping efficiency and system availability. The performance of the proposed model is verified by a comprehensive numerical example.

Keywords:

• cellular manufacturing system
• multi-machine production system
• use-based preventive maintenance policy
• interactive fuzzy programming
• multi-objective optimisation