DEPENDABILITY AND RELIABILITY OF MANUFACTURING SYSTEMS

Abstract

Manufacturing systems are characterized by three fundamental properties: performance, cost, and dependability. The analysis of a system from the pure performance viewpoint tends to be optimistic since it ignores the failure/repair behaviour in the system. On the other hand, pure availability analysis tends to be too conservative since performance considerations are not taken into account. They improve product quality and reduce production losses. Dependability of a manufacturing system is the ability to deliver service (products) that can justifiably be trusted. Performance engineering addresses sustainability along with other factors like quality, reliability, maintainability and safety. The current paper introduces a framework for the fault analysis of production process, and the availability evaluation especially in the Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS’s). Generally, computing dependability measures of repairable systems with usual failure and repair processes is difficult, through either analytical or numerical methods. Mathematical models and application software for this kind of problems are in good stead. Recent advances in neural networks show that they can be used in applications that involve predictions, including the manufacturing