A simulation based optimization approach to combine two hedging control policies in a transported degrading failure-prone manufacturing system

This paper deals with joint production and corrective maintenance problem of a transported material network failure-prone manufacturing system along which two aspects are supposed. First, each non-identical machine are subject to degradation with failure phenomena. When a failure occurs, system is either repaired or replaced with new one, repairing activity not only degrades machine operating state, but also increases with the next repair time. Second, optimality production control policy called Modified Hedging Point Policy (MHPP) and Modified Hedging Corridor Policy (MHCP) are applied for given network machine. The aim of this article is to find decision variables so as to minimize incurred cost function, including repair costs, stock related costs (i.e., holding costs, backlog and shortage) and setup cost, over an finite-horizon time. Simulation experimental approach with meta-heuristic algorithm is applied to obtain near-optimum decision variables.