Joint Maintenance and Energy Management in Manufacturing Systems: Prospect Discussion, Challenge Analysis, and a Case Study

The maintenance in manufacturing systems has been widely studied to improve equipment reliability, increase the productivity, and reduce operational cost. Recently, with the increasing concerns on climate change and environmental protection, the energy related performance of manufacturing system has also draw wide attention from both academia and industry. One common decision of maintenance and energy management can be the identification of the machines that could be shut down in the manufacturing system for either maintenance or energy saving purpose. Thus, the idea of implementing maintenance and energy control simultaneously has emerged. Some existing cases about the joint maintenance and energy control in manufacturing systems can be found in literature. In this paper, we further analyze the existing opportunities for joint energy and maintenance decision making in manufacturing systems. A few research directions towards this goal are proposed and discussed. The corresponding research challenges are also analyzed. A numerical case based on a section of an automotive assembly line is used to illustrate the potential benefits of the proposed approach.