Analyzing the impact of opportunistic maintenance optimization on manufacturing industries in Bangladesh: An empirical study

The study investigates the impact of opportunistic maintenance (OM) optimization on manufacturing industries, especially in Bangladesh, to reduce maintenance costs. To that end, OM strategies have been proposed and optimized for multi-unit manufacturing systems, whereas most of the existing research is for single- or two-unit systems. OM strategies in this research cover one of the three policies: preventive replacement, preventive repair, and a two-level maintenance approach. The proposed two-level maintenance approach is a combination of lower-level maintenance, known as preventive repair, and higher-level maintenance, known as preventive replacement. Simulation optimization (SO) techniques using Python were utilized to evaluate the strategies. Historical data from two of Bangladesh's most promising and significant sectors, the footwear and railway industries, was used as the case study. Compared to the currently utilized corrective maintenance approach, the two-level maintenance approach is the most effective for both case studies, demonstrating cost savings of 16.9 % and 22.4 % for the footwear and railway industries, respectively. This study reveals that manufacturing industries can achieve significant cost savings by implementing the proposed OM strategies, a concept that has yet to be explored in developing countries like Bangladesh. However, the study considered the proposed approaches for major components of the system, and more significant benefits can be achieved if it is possible to apply them to all critical components of the system.