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Equipment reliability significantly impacts productivity, and in order to obtain high equipment reliability and productivity, maintenance and production decision should be made simultaneously to keep manufacturing system healthy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the joint optimization of equipment maintenance and production decision for k-out-of-n system equipment with attenuation of product quality and to explore the impact of maintenance on the production and cost control for manufacturers.

A multi-period Markov chain model for k-out-of-n system equipment is set up based on the assumption that the deterioration of equipment is a pure birth process. Then, the maintenance cost, setup cost, inventory holding cost, shortage cost, production cost and the quality cost are analyzed with the uncertain demand and the attenuation of product quality stemmed from equipment deterioration. The total lowest cost per unit time and its specific calculation method are presented. Finally, the robustness and flexibility of the method are verified by a numerical example and the effects of equipment deterioration intensity and attenuation of product quality are analyzed.

The result shows that the joint decision model could not only satisfy the uncertain demand with low cost and strong robustness but also make the output products high quality level. In addition, the attenuation of product quality would influence the equipment maintenance and production decision and leads to the production waste and increases the operation cost greatly.

Implications derived from this study can help production maintenance managers and reliability engineers adequately select maintenance policy to improve the equipment efficiency and productivity with high quality level at a relatively low cost.

As overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a metric to estimate equipment effectiveness of production systems, the purpose of this paper is to identify strategic management tools and techniques based on OEE assessment of the ice cream production line.

This paper presents the collection and the analysis of data for ice cream production under real working conditions. The data cover a period of eight months. A framework process to improve the OEE of an automated production system was proposed. Six major stoppage losses, i.e. equipment failure, setup and adjustment, idling and minor stoppage, reduced speed, defects in the process, and reduced yield, were examined with the help of Pareto analysis. In addition, the actual availability (A), performance efficiency (PΕ) and quality rate (QR) measures, together with the complete OEE for each working day, week and month of the production line were shown.

The main goal of the study is to identify major stoppage losses, in order to examine and improve the overall equipment efficiency (OEE) of the ice cream production line through the application of an adequate management, i.e. TPM approach. Based on the obtained results, maintenance management strategy and production planning have been suggested to improve their maintenance procedures and the productivity as well.

The proposed method can be applied to each automated production system. The main benefits of this method are the improvement of productivity, quality enhancement of products, the reduction of sudden breakdowns and the cost of maintenance. Moreover, the analysis provides a useful perspective and helps managers/engineers make better decisions on the operations management of the line, and suggestions for improvement were proposed and will be implemented accordingly.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the underlying design information and success factors for production equipment acquisition, in order to support the design of high‐performance production systems.

The research strategy employed was an in‐depth case study of an industrialization project, together with a questionnaire of 25 equipment suppliers.

The study provides the reader with an insight into the role of design information when acquiring production equipment by addressing questions such as: What type of information is used? How do equipment suppliers obtain information? What factors facilitate a smooth production system acquisition?

Limitations are primarily associated with the chosen research methodology, which requires further empirical studies to establish a generic value.

The implications are that manufacturing companies have to transfer various types of design information with respect to the content and kind of information. More attention has to be placed on what information is transferred to ensure that equipment suppliers receive all the information needed to design and subsequently build the production equipment. To facilitate integration of equipment suppliers, manufacturing companies should appoint a contact person who can gather, understand and transform relevant design information.

External integration of equipment suppliers in production system design by means of design information is an area that has been rarely addressed in academia and industry.

The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) and to present an overview of TPM implementation practices adopted by the manufacturing organizations. It also seeks to highlight appropriate enablers and success factors for eliminating barriers in successful TPM implementation.

The paper systematically categorizes the published literature and then analyzes and reviews it methodically.

The paper reveals the important issues in Total Productive Maintenance ranging from maintenance techniques, framework of TPM, overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), TPM implementation practices, barriers and success factors in TPM implementation, etc. The contributions of strategic TPM programmes towards improving manufacturing competencies of the organizations have also been highlighted here.

The literature on classification of Total Productive Maintenance has so far been very limited. The paper reviews a large number of papers in this field and presents the overview of various TPM implementation practices demonstrated by manufacturing organizations globally. It also highlights the approaches suggested by various researchers and practitioners and critically evaluates the reasons behind failure of TPM programmes in the organizations. Further, the enablers and success factors for TPM implementation have also been highlighted for ensuring smooth and effective TPM implementation in the organizations.

The paper contains a comprehensive listing of publications on the field in question and their classification according to various attributes. It will be useful to researchers, maintenance professionals and others concerned with maintenance to understand the significance of TPM.

This paper deals with the organizing of interactive product development. Developing products in interaction between firms may provide benefits in terms of specialization, increased innovation, and possibilities to perform development activities in parallel. However, the differentiation of product development among a number of firms also implies that various dependencies need to be dealt with across firm boundaries. How dependencies may be dealt with across firms is related to how product development is organized. The purpose of the paper is to explore dependencies and how interactive product development may be organized with regard to these dependencies.

The analytical framework is based on the industrial network approach, and deals with the development of products in terms of adaptation and combination of heterogeneous resources. There are dependencies between resources, that is, they are embedded, implying that no resource can be developed in isolation. The characteristics of and dependencies related to four main categories of resources (products, production facilities, business units and business relationships) provide a basis for analyzing the organizing of interactive product development.

Three in-depth case studies are used to explore the organizing of interactive product development with regard to dependencies. The first two cases are based on the development of the electrical system and the seats for Volvo’s large car platform (P2), performed in interaction with Delphi and Lear respectively. The third case is based on the interaction between Scania and Dayco/DFC Tech for the development of various pipes and hoses for a new truck model.

The analysis is focused on what different dependencies the firms considered and dealt with, and how product development was organized with regard to these dependencies. It is concluded that there is a complex and dynamic pattern of dependencies that reaches far beyond the developed product as well as beyond individual business units. To deal with these dependencies, development may be organized in teams where several business units are represented. This enables interaction between different business units’ resource collections, which is important for resource adaptation as well as for innovation. The delimiting and relating functions of the team boundary are elaborated upon and it is argued that also teams may be regarded as actors. It is also concluded that a modular product structure may entail a modular organization with regard to the teams, though, interaction between business units and teams is needed. A strong connection between the technical structure and the organizational structure is identified and it is concluded that policies regarding the technical structure (e.g. concerning “carry-over”) cannot be separated from the management of the organizational structure (e.g. the supplier structure). The organizing of product development is in itself a complex and dynamic task that needs to be subject to interaction between business units.

This paper presents the second-generation estimates for the Italian engineering industry in 1911, a year documented both by the customary demographic census, and the first industrial census. The first part of this paper uses the census data to estimate the industry’s value added, sector by sector; the second further disaggregates each sector by activity, and estimates the value added, employment, physical product, and metal consumption of each one. A third, concluding section dwells on the dependence of cross-section estimates on time-series evidence. Three appendices detail the specific algorithms that generate the present estimates; a fourth, a useful sample of firm-specific data.

Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a metric for estimating equipment effectiveness of the industrial systems. The purpose of this paper is to identify maintenance improvement potentials using an OEE assessment within the croissant production line.

The present work is carried out by analyzing the failure and repair data of the line. The failure data cover a period of 15 months. During this period the croissant production line usually operates over the entire day (24 h per day) in three 8-h shifts per day, and pauses at the weekends. Descriptive statistics of the failure and repair data for the line based on scheduled and unscheduled interruptions were carried. Moreover, the actual availability (A), performance efficiency (PE) and quality rate (Q) measures, together with the complete OEE for each working day for the croissant production line, were shown.

The main objectives are to understand the operation management of the croissant production line, and to measure the OEE characteristics in precise quantitative terms. OEE analysis can help the company to identify the primary problems concerning the A, PE and Q and acts immediately.

This paper presents a successful evaluation of OEE which will provide a useful guide to aspects of the production process, which identifies the critical points of the line that require further improvement through effective maintenance strategy (i.e. total productive maintenance). Moreover, the analysis provides a useful perspective and helps managers and engineers make better decisions on how to improve manufacturing productivity and quality.

In this paper, the authors are concerned with a maintenance workshop (MW) centralizing all corrective maintenance activities. The purpose of this paper is to propose a methodology for designing a central maintenance workshop, enabling the evaluation of performance in terms of cost and sojourn time, for a given budget.

The authors propose a modeling framework based on queuing networks. The aim is to maximize operational availability of the production workshop, by reducing the sojourn time of failed equipment in the MW.

The proposed methodology leads to a maintenance decision support tool enabling to give the structure of the MW, performing at a higher level, but at a reasonable configuration cost. Simulation results illustrate the influence of different parameters, such as the number of stations and the level of spare parts in the MW, on the sojourn time of the equipment.

Only corrective maintenance is taken into account and only equipment that can be taken out of the production workshop are considered. The preventive replacement of some equipment items can be taken into account by the repair process by considering them as failed.

The work falls within a more general framework for optimizing maintenance costs, in the context of integration of multi-site services in a distributed context. The paper is concerned with centralized maintenance, and proposes to integrate the so-called repair by replacement technique in a MW, used for a multi-site production workshop.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the specific practices of management in the dispatching unit and to identify mechanisms for supporting transfer of shop floor knowledge embedded in operating manufacturing equipment.

The paper applies an inductive and a case study approach for exploring three empirical cases that represent different manufacturing facility relocation processes and differences in the applied managerial practices.

The paper identifies two important gaps in international production literature when firms relocate equipment to other sites; a time gap (from dismantling to re-assembly of production facilities) and a space gap (from the current to the new site abroad). These gaps are important for understanding why relocation processes are difficult and what management can do to facilitate such processes.

The paper identifies four issues that management faces in the dispatching context when relocating manufacturing facilities.

The paper gives new insights to a limited literature of shop floor knowledge transfer when relocating manufacturing facilities.

The purpose of this paper is to formulate a benchmark to increase the tyre curing press production rate while minimizing tyre curing press downtime and maintenance cost with the help of a maintenance management technique based on overall equipment effectiveness (OEE).

The methodology is based on determining the OEE of tyre curing press before and after rectifying the causes of failures. The failure mode and effect analysis (FMEA) technique is used to find out the root causes of repetitive failures in tyre curing press by using the risk priority number.

A significant change in the value of OEE is observed after rectifying the repetitive failures, which were determined using the FMEA technique. Thus, it is concluded that the OEE and FMEA assist in improving the industrial performance and competitiveness of the production equipment studied.

This study is limited to determining the OEE of single equipment only, not the whole production system. Manufacturing facilities are dependent on the operating environment; therefore a comparison of two different manufacturing plants based on the OEE value would not be justified.

This study can be applied in any tyre manufacturing industry in order to take competitive benefits, such as reduction in equipment downtime, increased production and reduction in maintenance cost.

The angle from which the paper approaches the bottleneck problem in a tyre production line is original for the studied company and shows positives results. It allows the company to apply the same approach in its other production equipment, lines and factories to achieve improvement in industrial performance and competitiveness.