Title: Determining Economic Manufacturing Quantity for an unreliable manufacturing system in discrete time setting

Authors: B.C. Giri, T. Dohi

Addresses: Department of Mathematics, Jadavpur University, Kolkata 700 032, India. ' Department of Information Engineering, Hiroshima University, 1-4-1 Kagamiyama, Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan

Abstract: The paper considers an Economic Manufacturing Quantity (EMQ) problem for a failure-prone manufacturing system in which the production facility may fail at most once during a production cycle. In a discrete time framework, we formulate the model under general-failure and -repair (corrective) time distributions based on the Net Present Value (NPV) approach. As a special case, the model with general failure and constant repair times is considered. The traditional long-run average cost model is obtained from the NPV model by taking limitation on the discount rate. The criteria for the existence of a local optimal solution are derived for the NPV as well as the long-run average cost models. With numerical examples, the optimal production policies are determined and sensitivity of some model-parameters are examined. A comparison of the outcome of the proposed model with the one obtained by time discretisation in the corresponding continuous time model is also made.

Keywords: discrete failure distribution; repair time distribution; machine failure; machine repair; optimal production policy; economic manufacturing quantity; EMQ; unreliable manufacturing systems; net present value; NPV.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2008.019168

International Journal of Operational Research, 2008 Vol.3 No.5, pp.557 - 574

Published online: 01 Jul 2008 *

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