PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE OF MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS UNDER SUBCONTRACTOR CONSTRAINTS

This paper describes a new preventive maintenance approach for manufacturing systems under subcontractor constraints. The manufacturing system under consideration consists of a machine M1 which produces a single product in a JIT context. To satisfy a constant demand d, the system called upon to another machine M2, comprising the so-called subcontractor, which produces at a certain rate the same type of product as M1. Both machines are subject to random failures. Whereas machine M2 is uncontrollable from the maintenance point of view, an ***age-limit policy is used for preventive maintenance of machine M1. We prove that the best age to perform preventive maintenance depends on the history of machine M1 and the state of M2. A numerical example is used to illustrate the proposed approach.