Optimal production and preventive maintenance rate in a failure-prone manufacturing system using discrete event simulation

Production control in a failure-prone manufacturing system (FPMS) is studied in the present paper. FPMS are those which are subjected to random breakdown assumption and corrective and preventive maintenance are considered for them too. In order to prevent shortage, buffer is used in these systems. Determining the inventory level of the buffer is one of the most important parameter. Another effective parameter is determining the time of period for preventive maintenance which is important to discover breakdowns before their occurrence and thus minimise the cost of corrective maintenance. The purpose of this paper is to determine the optimal production rate and time of period for preventive maintenance for an FPMS to minimise sum of holding shortage, corrective and preventive maintenance cost. To this end, discrete event simulation is used. Studying the system under conditions where analytical solution is not possible is the most important advantage of simulation method.