Investigation of System Productivity with Fuzzy Availability Analysis Considering Failure and Repair Times

Today’s more complicated engineering systems make it difficult to analyze system performance accurately due to the increase in the number of components and interconnections within the system. System performance and measures such as failure rate, repair rate and availability are important measures to analyze a system and obtain system productivity. While application of system availability is most widely used for electrical and electronic systems, in recent years it has been started to be used as a performance measure of manufacturing systems. In this study, a novel approach is proposed using both simulation modeling technique and fuzzy availability analysis considering failure and repair times of components to investigate system productivity in a more consistent and logical manner. Simulation model is also used to analyze system behavior and estimate system throughput. Because of insufficient and inaccurate historical data related with component failure and repair times of the considered system, failure and repair data are defined with the fuzzy membership function. This approach provides more detailed information about system characteristics. Thus, more realistic system productivity considering failure and repair times which represents the real behavior of system can be obtained using this approach.