Maintenance policy selection for JIT production systems

In a Just-in-Time production environment, due to the limited amount of in-process inventory, machine failures have a greater impact on the productivity. In this paper, we explore some characteristic factors of several classes of JIT systems that could play a role in selection of a suitable maintenance policy for each class. The study is also extended to assessment of the changes in the performance of a system under a given policy as a function of the changes in the values of these factors. In order to accomplish this, production and maintenance functions were considered as two inter-related components of the total system. Furthermore, sixteen simple and composite factors were identified as the characteristic factors defining JIT systems. An extensive experimentation on various systems defined by these factors revealed that these factors can be categorized into three relatively distinct classes. The first class includes those factors that play a major role in how effective a particular maintenance policy is for a system. The second class of factors consists of those that affect the selection of the policy only if they are within a certain range. The third class of factors are those that show no significant effect on the effectiveness of a maintenance policy.