Joint optimisation of preventive maintenance and inventory control in a production line using simulation

This paper proposes an integrated method for preventive maintenance and inventory control of a production line, composed of n machines (n≥1) without intermediate buffers. The machines are subject to failures and an age-dependent preventive maintenance policy is used. Approximate analytical results are proposed for the one machine case. Simulation software is used to model and simulate the behaviour of the production line of n machines under various maintenance and inventory control strategies. A methodology combining the simulation and genetic algorithms is proposed jointly to optimize maintenance and inventory control policies. Results are compared with the analytical solutions.