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 unsatisfactory robustness. This paper discusses an approach to integrate maintenance strategies into a production 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 influence 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 support 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%.