Increasing production rate in Kanban controlled assembly lines through preventive maintenance

Abstract

Preventive maintenance is widely implemented in manufacturing industries for reducing random machine failures. High availability of a machine may be ensured by avoiding excessive or insufficient maintenance. Although analytical models of single or two-machine systems with preventive maintenance have been proposed in the literature, similar study on multi-machine systems remains limited. In this paper, the authors investigate preventive maintenance in Kanban controlled assembly lines and develop an analytical model for such systems. This model decomposes an assembly line into a series of primitive line segments. Each segment is characterised by a continuous-time-discrete-state Markov process. This model provides the estimates of production rate and work-in-process, which can be used to evaluate the effect of preventive maintenance on an assembly line. Additionally, based on the proposed model, we also present an algorithm to determine the maintenance rates for all machines in a Kanban controlled assembly line. As demonstrated in the numerical experiments, the analytical model is useful to manufacturers in preventing excessive or insufficient maintenance and thus improving the production rate of Kanban controlled assembly lines. © 2012 Taylor & Francis.