Deep reinforcement learning for maintenance optimization of multi-component production systems considering quality and production plan

In this article, the maintenance optimization of multi-component production systems is investigated by considering quality and production plan. On the one hand, the downtime determined by the production plan provides opportunities for reducing maintenance costs; on the other hand, the deterioration of product quality induced by poor health state leads to extra loss. The coupled relations between production plan, quality, and maintenance, as well as the dependence between multiple components, pose challenges for maintenance optimization. To overcome these challenges, a novel decision model and a deep reinforcement learning-based solving method are proposed. Specifically, in addition to the degradation states of all components, the remaining time of the current batch related to the production plan is also treated as the system state, and the quality loss related to the degradation states is added to the reward function. The deep Q-network algorithm is employed, solving the maintenance optimization problem that considers quality and production plan. The effectiveness of the proposed method is validated by a numerical experiment.