Title: The heuristics of effective maintenance policy under the given availability

Authors: Sakon Wongmongkolrit; Bordin Rassameethes

Addresses: International Graduate Program of Industrial Engineering (IGPIE), Faculty of Engineering, Kasetsart University, Bangkhen Campus, Bangkok 10900, Thailand. ' Operations Management Department, Faculty of Business Administration, Kasetsart University, Bangkhen, Bangkok, 10900, Thailand

Abstract: Maintenance actions are very important for all industries and manufacturers. The minimum maintenance cost with good maintenance actions is a target goal of all manufacturers on the basis that we cannot entirely avoid machine failures. Nevertheless, do more maintenance, will reduce chances of machine breakdowns but will produce more maintenance cost. Contrary, do less maintenance, will produce less maintenance cost but has more changes to face with machine breakdowns. Then, the optimal maintenance policy will be helpful for solving this problem. Thus, this study and its model formulations are mainly interested on the methodology of sharing maintenance downtime between preventive and corrective maintenance under the given availability. This will be helpful for reducing the maintenance cost under the given certain availability. Therefore, the approach has emphasised with repair rate, maintenance downtime and to be concerned with the maintenance actions under the given availability. Furthermore, the heuristics are solved by the Lagrange multiplier approach, and based on the arrangement of maintainability between preventive and corrective maintenances. Additionally, the complex realistic scenarios of the maintenance optimisation will be the solution which will be useful and to be the benefit for reducing the total maintenance cost, unplanned stoppage, and reduce the contingencies from machine failure.

Keywords: maintenance policies; heuristics; given availability; maintenance actions; maintenance costs; machine failures; machine breakdowns; optimal maintenance; downtime sharing; maintenance downtime; preventive maintenance; corrective maintenance; cost reduction; repair rates; Lagrange multipliers; mathematical optimisation; Joseph Lagrange; maintainability; unplanned stoppages; contingency reduction; collaborative enterprises; collaboration; maintenance modelling; maintenance management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCENT.2011.043824

International Journal of Collaborative Enterprise, 2011 Vol.2 No.4, pp.251 - 262

Published online: 23 Nov 2011 *

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