Hedging point in the production control of failure prone manufacturing systems

Most manufacturing systems are large and complex. It is natural to divide the control into a hierarchy consisting of a number fo different levels. Each levels is characterized by the length of the planning horizon and the kind of data required for the decision making process. This paper describes an approach for the incorporation of Maintenance times into a hierachical scheduling for a failure prone flexible manufacturing system. The Maintenance should not be performed too often because of the resulting reduction of capacity. The machine failure and preventive maintenance are considered simultaneously.