A study in joint maintenance scheduling and production planning

Abstract

In practical production planning it is critical to consider reliability/inspection/maintenance parameters. Otherwise, a production plan will be vulnerable to breakdowns and other disruptions due to unreliability of equipment. Similarly, an optimal maintenance schedule must include production/inventory parameters in practice. A maintenance schedule developed independently from production plan may necessitate a shutdown of equipment to perform preventive maintenance while, according to the production plan, the equipment cannot be stopped until calculated economic production quantity is achieved. In both cases, shortage, maintenance, and defective costs increase. The main idea of this thesis is to simultaneously consider these two classes of parameters in a single model to achieve a joint optimal maintenance schedule and production plan. Production/inventory control models in presence of periodic planned maintenance are selected as the base for development. Joint optimization of buffer stock level and inspection interval in an unreliable production system is studied and an extension is modelled.