IMPACT OF MAINTENANCE POLICIES ON THE PERFORMANCE OF MANUFACTURING CELLS

With increases in maintenance, equipment, and labour costs, the need f or an effective maintenance program is increasing. Previous research h as shown that the use of preventive maintenance procedures may allow f or a simpler and less expensive way of maintaining and operating equip ment. Many studies have dealt with various characteristics of cellular manufacturing. However, almost all of these studies have assumed mach ines do not break down. The objective of this study is to compare the performance of three maintenance policies in conjunction with four two -stage group scheduling heuristics, under eight experimental condition s. Approaches which induce shop efficiency by performing preventive ma intenance and machine setups simultaneously are also considered. The r esults of this study extend the findings of previous research by demon strating that utilizing preventive maintenance procedures generally re sults in better average flowtime and percent tardy performance while d eteriorating the average tardiness performance in some cases. Furtherm ore, it was shown that conducting preventive maintenance and machine s etups simultaneously improves the average tardiness performance while maintaining the same average flowtime performance compared to the case where these activities are performed separately. Finally, it was demo nstrated that if the primary concern is average flowtime or other effi ciency oriented measures, the choice of group scheduling heuristic is critical. However, if the primary concern is due date attainment, the choice of maintenance policy becomes more critical.