Modelling condition monitoring and dynamic grouping of maintenance actions with extended coloured stochastic Petri nets

The operational availability of machine tools is an essential prerequisite for the profitability of the manufacturing industry. Maintenance is driven by increasing cost effectiveness. Condition monitoring often is a very effective way to minimize downtimes of crucial system components. The grouping of maintenance activities is another promising approach to reduce down times or maintenance costs of complex systems. In this paper we will present an improved methodology for the modelling and analysis of complex production systems. The model incorporates an extended coloured stochastic Petri net (ECSPN) and a reliability block diagram (RBD). The flexible modelling power of ECSPN to model condition based maintenance strategies and dynamically grouped maintenance actions will be demonstrated. The influence of these strategies on the system availability will be shown in an example.