Evaluation of economic plausibility of integrating maintenance strategies in autonomous production control: A case study in automotive industry

Recent advances in autonomous production control (APC) enhance to cope with growing challenges of manufacturing industry regarding high delivery accuracy and short delivery dates, i.e. concurrently dealing with shorter planning horizons, increasing planning complexity and an increasing rate of changes in planning. However, the majority of APC approaches are based on idealized assumptions, lack integrative planning, and control mechanisms. In particular, the state-of-the-art APC approaches mainly ignore maintenance planning strategies, related decision factors, and maintenance measures. The ultimate practical implications are a reduced decision quality, and a resulting low acceptance of APC systems. In most cases, therefore, implementation of APC systems in industrial applications are not yet affordable. Pursuing this line of research, this paper presents a conceptual model for integrating maintenance strategies in APC. The focus is on evaluation of economic plausibility of the integrated approach, which deploys a cost function for a market-oriented decision-making. Using an agent-based simulation environment, the model is evaluated in an industrial use case in the automotive sector.