Dynamic Maintenance Strategy With Q-Learning for Workstations in a Flow Line Manufacturing System

Every machine or equipment in a manufacturing facility is subject to failure due to deterioration based on cumulative wear, crack growth, erosion, etc. This failure will cause production losses and delays resulting in high costs. As the modern manufacturing systems are getting more and more complex, intelligent maintenance schemes must replace the old labor intensive planned maintenance systems to ensure that equipment continues to function. If the maintenance decision is based on the state of the system rather than its age, this leads to the choice of a Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) policy to prevent catastrophic unexpected machine breakdowns and increase the availability of individual machines, but it also introduces randomness into the manufacturing operation. This paper presents a Q-Learning model to dynamically group maintenance actions on different machines and execute them simultaneously, so that one can reduce maintenance cost and increase the efficiency of the manufacturing system.