A PM Policy for a Production System Considering the Quality Cost of Processed Products

This paper introduces an analytic model to decide the economic preventive maintenance policy for a production system. A policy is defined to be optimal if it minimizes the expected cost rate comprised of failure costs, maintenance costs and quality costs which are assessed from the quality of processed products using the concept of a loss function. The model is developed assuming that a system can have not only failure but also degradation during a production and the degradation comes with the quality-down of processed products. In addition, maintenance activities are assumed to restore the system condition before the failure or degradation. Some numerical examples and sensitivity analyses for the model parameters are provided to derive the practical interpretations that can be helpful for implementing the model.