Minimal repair policies for an economic manufacturing process

Abstract

This paper deals with economic manufacturing quantity (EMQ) models with stochastic machine breakdown and repairs. Under two minimal repair policies to maintain a production machine, the expected cost functions per unit time in the steady state, incurred in the manufacturing operation, are formulated and the optimal policies which minimize them are calculated. As a special case, we consider the case where the machine breakdown time follows the homogeneous Poisson process and calculate the optimal EMQ policies numerically. Also, an approximation method is used to represent the expected cost.