Simulation optimization of failure-prone manufacturing systems considering reliability-centered maintenance and defective items return

Production planning is a crucial activity in manufacturing systems. However, the failure of production units in these systems is inevitable and can disrupt the production processes. Implementing preventive maintenance and repair strategies can enhance competitiveness in the market, reduce machines failures, and optimize production unit performance. The objective of this article is to develop a reliability-centered maintenance and production control policy that minimizes the total cost of production, perishable product, scrap, rework, and corrective and preventive maintenance in the long term. To achieve this, a simulation of a multi-unit production system with multiple products is conducted, assuming the presence of perishable items, and the performance indicators of the system are calculated. Then, the system is optimized using meta-heuristic coding methods in ARENA software 14. The numerical examples demonstrate that the implementation of the control policy, along with the reliability-centered maintenance, significantly reduces the costs and risks about 5% associated with system uncertainty.