Hierarchical control of production and maintenance rates in manufacturing systems Available to Purchase

This paper deals with the production and preventive maintenance planning control problem for a multi‐machine flexible manufacturing system (FMS). A two‐level hierarchical control model is developed according to the discrepancy between the time scale of the discounting cost event and one of the machine state processes. The proposed model extends the classical singular perturbation approach by considering age‐dependent machine failure rates and controlling both production and preventive maintenance rates. We replace the stochastic optimal control problem by a deterministic one termed limiting control problem. With this approach, we compute an age‐dependent near‐optimal control policy of the stochastic initial control problem from the optimal solution of the equivalent limiting control problem. A numerical example is used to illustrate the procedure and to show the reduction of the control problem size.