Impact of opportunistic maintenance on manufacturing system performance

Opportunistic maintenance is an effective strategy to reduce the interference between maintenance and production operations in multi-stage manufacturing systems. However, its application in industry is still limited due to the difficulty to predict its impact on system performance. This paper develops a methodology for estimating the production gains that can be generated by exploiting opportunistic windows to perform preventive maintenance tasks during production. The characteristic behaviour of the system is investigated and suitable policies for implementing opportunistic maintenance actions are derived. The industrial benefits are demonstrated with reference to a real industrial case in the high-volume production of ready-to-assemble furniture.