Prediction of Passive Maintenance Opportunity Windows on Bottleneck Machines in Complex Manufacturing Systems

In this paper, we investigate hidden opportunities for performing proper maintenance tasks during production time without causing production losses. One of the maintenance opportunities on a machine is when the machine is starved or blocked due to the occurrence of random failures on its upstream or downstream machines. Such failure-induced starvation or blockage time is defined as a passive maintenance opportunity window (PMOW), and is predicted on the bottleneck machines in manufacturing systems with different configurations. The effectiveness of the PMOW prediction algorithm is validated through case studies in both simulations and an automotive assembly plant.