A methodology for simultaneous optimisation of design parameters for the preventive maintenance and quality policy incorporating Taguchi loss function

The performance of a production system depends on the breakdown-free operation of equipment and processes. Maintenance and quality control play an important role in achieving this goal. In addition to deteriorating with time, equipment may experience a quality shift (i.e. process moves to out-of-control state), which is characterised by a higher rejection rate and a higher tendency to fail. This paper develops an integrated model for joint optimisation of preventive maintenance interval and control parameters incorporating the Taguchi loss function. We consider two types of maintenance policies: minimal corrective maintenance that maintains the state of the equipment without affecting the age and imperfect preventive maintenance that upgrades the equipment in between ‘as good as new’ and ‘as bad as old’ condition. The proposed model enables the determination of the optimal value of each of the four decision variables, i.e. sample size (n), sample frequency (h), control limit coefficient (k), and preventive maintenance interval (t _PM) that minimises the expected total cost of the integration per unit time. A numerical example is presented to demonstrate the effect of the cost parameters on the joint economic design of preventive maintenance and process quality control policy. The sensitivity of the various parameters is also examined.