SIMULATION-BASED PLANNING OF MAINTENANCE ACTIVITIES IN THE AUTOMOTIVE INDUSTRY

Factories world-wide do not utilize their existing capacity to a satisfactory level. Several studies indicate an average Overall Equipment Efficiency (OEE) of around 55 % in manufacturing industry. One major reason is machine downtime leading to substantial system losses culminating in production plans with un-satisfactory robustness. This paper discusses an approach to integrate maintenance strategies into a pro-duction planning approach using discrete event simulation. The aim is to investigate how and where in the planning process maintenance strategies can be integrated and how different maintenance strategies influ-ence production performance and the overall robustness of production plans. The approach is exemplified in an automotive case study, integrating strategies for reactive maintenance in a simulation model to sup-port decision making on how repair orders should be prioritized to increase production performance. The results show that introducing priority-based planning of maintenance activities has a potential to increase productivity by approximately 5%.