A REAL-TIME ANALYSIS OF CONDITION-BASED MAINTENANCE IN A MULTISTAGE PRODUCTION SYSTEM

Condition-based maintenance (CBM) is important to improve production system performance because it is capable to effectively prevent costly equipment failures. However, CBM usually has to stop machines for maintenance during operation and this may severely impede the normal production. This paper establishes a real-time CBM decision making method to minimize the negative impact of CBM stoppage events in a multistage manufacturing system. The method utilizes an event based analysis method to estimate the permanent production loss resulted from a CBM event. An online control algorithm is introduced to effectively explore the optimal CBM control options. Simulation case studies are performed to validate the event-based CBM decision making method.