Joint optimisation of the maintenance and buffer stock policies considering back orders

Abstract

Inventory control and maintenance systems are two main processes in production systems that play a vital role in the efficiency of production resources. This study aims to propose a joint optimisation procedure for maintenance and inventory policies in a single-machine production system considering back orders. The failure rate is random and the minimum level of accessibility required for preventive maintenance is considered. To close the problem at hand to the real-world condition, demand is considered as uncertain and shortage is inevitable. In addition, the unsatisfied demand is considered as back order. The problem is described and formulated via a mathematical model and all the possible scenarios corresponding to the different possible cases of the problem are described. Then a numerical iterative procedure is introduced to solve the problem in a reasonable time. The proposed procedure does not explore all solution space, but it behaves like a numerical optimisation procedure and provides a near optimal solution. The performance of the proposed method is evaluated using a numerical instance based on a real case study. In addition, some sensitivity analyses are performed to identify the most important effective parameters.