Effect of maintenance policies on the just-in-time production system

Using simulation, experimental design, and regression analysis, mathematical models are developed here to describe the effect that maintenance policy, machine unreliability, processing time variability, ratio of preventive maintenance time to processing time, ratio of minimal repair time to preventive maintenance time, and production line size have on various measures of performance, namely total production line output and production line variability of the just-in-time production system. The analysis of the data shows that under different situations, different maintenance policies do not have the same effect on the production line performance. The following conclusions were obtained; when the number of production machines is low (five machines or less), and/or when the ratio of minimal repair time to preventive maintenance time is high, maintenance policy III leads to a higher performance than maintenance policy II. Otherwise maintenance policy II, which is more sensitive to the change of the ratio of minimal repair time to preventive maintenance time, leads to a higher performance. The results of the study can be utilized in choosing a maintenance policy as a function of the production process parameters. Once a policy is chosen, the practitioner can select the most important factors to control under that policy in order to minimize the machine idle time, maximize the production process reliability, improve productivity, and therefore increase the production line performance.