Availability Analysis of the Critical Production System in SMEs Using the Markov Decision Model

Abstract

Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in today’s world have numerous issues in ensuring the availability and safety of critical machines and their components in the working environment. As a result, SMEs considered planning and scheduling maintenance tasks to be a significant threat. The goal of this research is to identify the critical subsystem of the automobile spare parts production plant in the southern region of Tamil Nadu, India, and then to prioritize the maintenance activity and set up an architecture for autonomous preventive maintenance (PM) in SMEs that includes an optimal decision support system. The transition state diagram of the individual and simultaneous production system has been developed with the application of the Markov decision model approach. It was used to analyze the present variables of the production systems and forecast the optimal maintenance parameters such as the failure rate and the repair rate, through the production system’s availability analysis. This availability analysis reveals that system B (Piercing) is classified as the most critical because of the abrupt availability variation compared to all other production systems, concerning the corresponding maintenance parameters such as a failure rate of 0.0371, a repair rate of 0.7094, and the availability of the piercing system of 0.5056. Finally, the use of an autonomous PM management system and the most effective maintenance workforce has enhanced productivity and customer satisfaction in SMEs. The predictive maintenance management system has been further investigated to determine the real-time remaining useful life (RUL) of critical systems in the automobile spare parts manufacturing plant in the southern region of Tamil Nadu, India.