A novel approach for production scheduling of a high pressure die casting machine subjected to selective maintenance and a sampling procedure for quality control

Effective maintenance keeps machines in good working condition, improving the machine availability during production. It also minimizes the process failure rate due to component failure, resulting into improved product quality. In this paper the interrelationship between maintenance, production scheduling and quality control is captured using an integrated approach. A mathematical model comprising of total cost of selective maintenance, process quality control using a sampling procedure and production scheduling is developed for a single machine manufacturing system. Simultaneous optimization using the proposed integrated model results into the decision on maintenance actions namely repair, replace and do-nothing for each component, along with the values of parameters for the sampling procedure and the optimal production schedule. A numerical study is presented to demonstrate the applicability of the proposed model. A simulated annealing algorithm is used for obtaining the near optimal solution to the decision parameters. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is compared with the conventional approach of decision making for maintenance, quality control and production scheduling. The results indicate that integrated approach is better as compared to the conventional approach. © 2013 The Society for Reliability Engineering, Quality and Operations Management (SREQOM), India and The Division of Operation and Maintenance, Lulea University of Technology, Sweden.