Calculation and optimisation model for costs and effects of availability relevant service elements

The competitiveness of manufacturing companies depends on the availability of their production facilities. The equipment of highly integrated production facilities with robust components and surveillance functionality combined with the right service elements contributes significantly towards securing this availability. In this context there exists an urgent need for research to develop methods allowing the determination of an optimal combination of machine equipment and service elements ensuring defined availability levels. The article describes the development of an integrated approach to determine the complex interdependencies between machine equipment and service levels. Furthermore, the achieved availabilities as well as the resulting costs are displayed. Based on these results, the choice of a machine’s equipment and of service levels shall be harmonised. The main focus of this article is the development of a suitable reliability model combined with the identification of relevant model parameters.