An Optimal Preventive Maintenance Model to Enhance Availability and Reliability of Flexible Manufacturing Systems

General preventive maintenance model for the components of a system, which improves the reliability to ‘as good as new,’ was used to optimize the maintenance cost. The cost function of a maintenance policy was minimized under given availability constraint. On the other hand, in order to ensure appropriate reliability and availability, the development of the optimal maintenance policy is the one of the main issues in system to perform preventive maintenance (PM) in equipment. In this paper, maintenance characteristics of a typical flexible manufacturing system (FMS) have been determined. These characteristics can be used to understand and prevent the complex reality of failures and repairs. Also, an optimal model for the preventive maintenance management of a FMS has been presented based on preview literature in order to enhance availability and reliability of this system and to reduce the cost of maintenance tasks. Finally, proposed framework has been applied for a robot paint sprayer and its results shown in a form of the preventive maintenance plan, distribution fitting and Reliabilities’ parameters for each component s of robot paint sprayer, and the maintenance scheduling timetable.