Impact of maintenance policies on the performance of manufacturing cells

With increases in maintenance, equipment, and labour costs, the need for an effective maintenance program is increasing. Previous research has shown that the use of preventive maintenance procedures may allow for a simpler and less expensive way of maintaining and operating equipment. Many studies have dealt with various characteristics of cellular manufacturing. However, almost all of these studies have assumed machines do not break down. The objective of this study is to compare the performance of three maintenance policies in conjunction with four two-stage group scheduling heuristics, under eight experimental conditions. Approaches which induce shop efficiency by performing preventive maintenance and machine setups simultaneously are also considered. The results of this study extend the findings of previous research by demonstrating that utilizing preventive maintenance procedures generally results in better average flowtime and percent tardy performance while deteriorating the average tardiness performance in some cases. Furthermore, it was shown that conducting preventive maintenance and machine setups simultaneously improves the average tardiness performance while maintaining the same average flowtime performance compared to the case where these activities are performed separately. Finally, it was demonstrated that if the primary concern is average flowtime or other efficiency oriented measures, the choice of group scheduling heuristic is critical. However, if the primary concern is due date attainment, the choice of maintenance policy becomes more critical.