Increasing availability of production systems in robust layouts via assignment of maintenance resources

The trend toward increased automation and maximum machine utilization has forced the managers to pay even more attention to maintain the equipments and keep them in available state. As more and more factories need reliable/available systems, the subject of maintenance management is taking on a renewed importance. Regarding the cost effects of Work-in-Processes (WiP), manufacturers try to reduce/remove them from their production system. Robust layout is a noble well-known layout for manufacturing systems that reduced amount of work-in-process is one of its characteristics and has lots of advantages over other production layouts. The reduced amount of WiP´s has been proved to highly affect the effectiveness of maintenance systems as a failure can idle an entire production system. Due to the reduced amount of WiP´s, structure of maintenance system should be taken into account for keeping machines and equipments in an available state. The effectiveness of maintenance system on increasing availability can be improved via allocation of spare parts and other maintenance resources required for the service of facilities. Given this, a new maintenance assignment model is presented for a robust layout.