Drawing inspiration from manufacturing production processes like chemical and steel manufacturing, the distributed blocking flowshop scheduling problem with preventive maintenance and sequence-dependent setup times (DBFSP/PM/SDST) is studied. First, it is described by a mixed-integer linear programming model with the objective of minimizing the total flowtime. Second, we propose a Q-learning and learning mechanism co-driven approach, integrating it into the discrete grey wolf optimization algorithm (DGWO_Q). In the algorithm, the neighborhood search structure is adjusted using Q-learning based on dynamic feedback from the environment. The balance between exploration and exploitation can be improved by introducing learning mechanisms in the search phase that can guide the grey wolf as it approaches the prey. Furthermore, a differential hunting strategy is designed to prevent the algorithm from falling into local optima. Third, a heuristic that enhances the quality of the initial solution is proposed for the problem characteristics. Finally, the proposed DGWO_Q is compared with four conventional efficient algorithms in numerical experiments on 225 instances of different sizes. Experimental results show that the DGWO_Q algorithm demonstrates excellent performance across test cases of various scales, effectively reducing production cycle time, setup times and the impact of maintenance downtime on production efficiency. It provides an efficient intelligent optimization approach for solving the complex scheduling problem.

In this paper, a distributed no-wait permutation flowshop scheduling problem with a preventive maintenance operation (PM/DNWPFSP) is investigated. A mixed-integer linear programming model for the PM/DNWPFSP is established. The problem characteristics and preventive maintenance characteristics of the PM/DNWPFSP are analyzed, and an accelerated calculation method of the completion time is proposed. A hybrid artificial bee colony (HABC) algorithm with an iterated local search mechanism for neighborhood search is proposed. To improve the quality of the solution, the shift, the swap and the hybrid operators are conducted in the critical factory. A local search operator based on the shift, the swap and the hybrid operators is proposed to jump out of local optima. A large number of experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed HABC. The experimental results show that the proposed HABC algorithm has many promising advantages in solving the PM/DNWPFSP.

Efficient business organizations must balance quality, cost, and time constraints in competitive environments. Reflecting the complexity of this task, we consider manufacturing systems including several stages of production chains requiring time measurement. When production scheduling is not prioritized in such enterprises, several negative effects may occur. A corporation may suffer financial penalties as well as negative brand exposure, and thus may find its credibility challenged. Therefore, in this study, we propose constructive methods to minimize a total tardiness criterion, considering preventative maintenance constraints to reflect the reality of industrial practice, focusing on a no-wait flowshop environment in which jobs are successively processed without operational interruptions. In addition to proposing constructive methods to solve the no-wait flowshop production scheduling problem, a metaheuristic is presented as an approach to improve results obtained by constructive methods. Computational experiments were designed and performed to compare several production scheduling algorithms. Among various constructive heuristics considered, an algorithm called HENLL using an insertion logic showed the best performance. The proposed metaheuristic is based on the iterated greedy (IG) search method, and the results obtained demonstrated significant improvement compared to the heuristics alone. It is expected that this study may be used by production planning and control (PPC) professionals to apply the proposed method to schedule production more efficiently. We show that the proposed method successfully presented a better solution in relation to total tardiness, considering the above mentioned environment.

This paper aims to develop a maintenance optimization model to maintain a high level of efficiency and reliability of the machinery. The methodological approach is based on preventive maintenance through the partial or total replacement of critical components. Although an intermediate intervention control, the focus is on a particular machine that has stopped several times, reducing its operational availability and resulting in a high cost of non-production. This study uses a Weibull model to analyze and optimize the correct maintenance process of the machinery considered. The failure data are then analyzed and scheduled. The final purpose is to standardize the operators' intervention procedures to reduce the time for the same interventions.

An effective operations of a projection spot welding (PSW) machine is closely related to the effec-tiveness of the maintenance. Timely maintenance can prevent failures and improve reliability and maintainability of the machine. Therefore, establishing the maintenance frequency for the welding machine is one of the most important tasks for plant engineers. In this regard, reliability analysis of the welding machine can be used to establish preventive maintenance intervals (PMI) and to identify the critical parts of the system. In this reliability and maintainability study, analysis of the PSW machine was carried out. The failure and repair data for analysis were obtained from automobile manufacturing company located in Uzbekistan. The machine was divided into three main sub-systems: electrical, pneumatic and hydraulic. Different distributions functions for all sub-systems was tested and their parameters tabulated. Based on estimated parameters of the analyzed distribu-tions, PMI for the PSW machines sub-systems at different reliability levels was calculated. Finally, preventive measures for enhancing the reliability of the PSW machine sub-systems are suggested.

Manufacturing systems need to be able to work under the dynamic and uncertain production environment. Machine and routing flexibility combined with preventive maintenance actions can improve the performance of the manufacturing systems under dynamic conditions. This paper evaluates different levels of machine and routing flexibility combined with different degrees of preventive maintenance policy. The performance measures considered are throughput, work in process and throughput. The performance measures are compared with a system without any flexibility and no preventive maintenance actions. Different levels of flexibility and preventive maintenance actions are examined under a simulation environment. The simulation results highlight more important factors for the performance measures and the best combination of the factors to improve the performance.

In reality, the machines may interrupt because of the nature of deterioration of the machines. Thus, it is inevitable to perform maintenance alongside production planning. The preventive maintenance is a schedule of strategic operations that are performed prior to the failure occurring, to retain the system operating at the preferred level of consistency. Thus, preventive maintenance plays a significant role in flow shop scheduling models. With its practical significance, this study addresses a practical three-machine n jobs flow shop-scheduling problem (FSSP) in which machine specific preventive maintenance, where each machine is given with a maintenance schedule is considered. In addition, a practical ordered precedence constraint in which some set of jobs has to process in the specified order irrespective of their processing times is also considered. The problem’s goal is to establish the optimal job sequence and preventive maintenance such that the overall cost of tardiness and preventive maintenance is as minimum as possible. An efficient heuristic approach is designed to tackle the present model, resulting in total cost savings. A comparative analysis is not conducted due to absence of studies on the current problem in the literature. However, Computational experiments are carried out on some test instances and results are reported. The reported results may be useful for future studies.

Machine failures during production period may impose thousands to millions of dollars to a manufacturing system. In this paper, the impact of machine failures on production lines in a closed-loop supply chain systems is examined. For this purpose, a new method is proposed for scheduling manufacturing workshops in a supply chain systems. The aim is to determine the best production plans in a manufacturing system by considering alternative preventive maintenance programs while machine failures can affect system performance. To solve the model, a hybrid Ant Colony and Simulated Annealing algorithms is developed and the results are compared with branch and bound method. Our findings show that the condition of emerging machine failure affects machines’ capacity which yields to lost sale. The impacts of using appropriate preventive maintenance on reducing lost sale is also examined. The results indicate that the proposed method can significantly reduce the level of sale variation in supply chain systems.

In most industrial environments, it is usually considered that machines are accessible throughout the planning horizon, but in real situation, machines may be unavailable due to a scheduled preventive maintenance where the periods of unavailability are known in advance. The main idea of this paper is to consider different preventive maintenance policies on machines regarding open shop scheduling problem (OSSP) with sequence dependent setup times (SDST) using immune algorithm. The preventive maintenance (PM) policies are planned for maximizing availability of machines or keeping minimum level of reliability through the production horizon. The objective function of the paper is to minimize makespan. In total, the proposed algorithm extensively is compared with six adaptations of existing heuristic and meta-heuristic methods for the problem through data sets from benchmarks based on Taillard’s instances with some adjustments. The results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms other algorithms for this problem.

This paper concentrates on the evaluation of reliability measures of a computer system of two-identical units having independent failure of h/w and s/w components. Initially one unit is operative and the other is kept as spare in cold standby. There is a single server visiting the system immediately whenever needed. The server conducts preventive maintenance of the unit after a maximum operation time. If server is unable to repair the h/w components in maximum repair time, then components in the unit are replaced immediately by new one. However, only replacement of the s/w components has been made at their failure. The priority is given to the preventive maintenance over repair activities of the h/w. The time to failure of the components follows negative exponential distribution whereas the distribution of preventive maintenance, repair and replacement time are taken as arbitrary. The expressions for some important reliability measures of system effectiveness have been derived using semi-Markov process and regenerative point technique. The graphical behavior of the results has also been shown for a particular case.