JOINT QUALITY CONTROL AND PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE STRATEGY FOR IMPERFECT PRODUCTION PROCESSES

In this paper, we develop a joint quality control and preventive maintenance policy for a production system producing conforming and nonconforming units. According to the proportion l of non conforming units observed and compared to a threshold value lm, one decides to undertake or not the maintenance actions. A buffer stock h is built up to ensure the continuous supply of the subsequent production line during the maintenance actions. This approach allows to generate a second order response surface allowing to easily determine the optimal rate, lm*, and the optimal size, h*, which minimize the total cost per time unit.