On defect propagation in multi-machine stochastically deteriorating systems with incomplete information

Abstract

In many manufacturing environments, costly job inspection provides information about the random deterioration of the machines. The resulting maintenance and inspection problem is extensively studied for a single machine system by using the framework of Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs). In this work, this concept is extended to multiple operations and multiple job types by considering two process flow topologies: (i) re-entrant flow, (ii) hybrid flow. The resulting (significantly large sized) POMDPs are solved using a point based method called PERSEUS, and the results are compared with those obtained by conventionally used periodic policies. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.