Minimal production level and reliability measurement for a maintainable production system under demand and budget constraints

This paper proposes two performance indicators, a minimal production level for demand D and maintenance budget B, and maintenance reliability for a maintainable production system (MPS) under both preventive and perfect maintenance consideration. The MPS owns the features of stochastic capacity and reworking action. The minimal production level for D and B is the minimal state of MPS fulfilling D subject to B. The maintenance reliability is defined as the probability that the MPS can successfully process D subject to B. The first indicator is regarded as the lowest acceptable point to repair the MPS; the other is adopted to measure the current performance of the MPS and can be a basis for production improvement. A developed procedural solution integrating a maintenance model and an activity-on-vertex predecessor-set technique is validated via a case of printed circuit board production to determine both indicators. [Received 22 July 2015; Revised 30 May 2016; Accepted 17 April 2017]