Odds-based decision-making tool for opportunistic production-maintenance synchronization
Résumé
The importance of the maintenance function has increased because of its role in keeping and improving system availability and safety, as well as product quality. Indeed a new role for maintenance exists to enhance the eco-efficiency of the product lifecycle. The concept of ‘lifecycle maintenance' emerged to stress this role leading to promote, at the manufacturing stage, an innovative culture wherein maintenance activities become of equal importance to actual production activities. This equivalence requires mainly considering the integration of the maintenance and the production strategy planning for developing opportunistic maintenance tasks preserving conjointly the product–production–equipment performances. In this paper, a novel approach is proposed for integrating maintenance into production planning. The approach uses the ‘odds algorithm' and is based upon the theory of optimal stopping. The objective is to select, among all the production stoppages already planned, those which will be optimal to develop maintenance tasks preserving the expected product conditions. It combines criteria such as product performance and component reliability. The feasibility and benefits of this approach are investigated first from a numerical point of view and then from an industrial point of view using TELMA (TELe-MAintenance) platform supporting the unwinding of metal bobbins.