Reliability evaluation for multi-state manufacturing systems with quality-reliability dependency

Abstract As multi-state reliability models and the dependency theory can characterize the polymorphism of manufacturing systems during degradation, they have been discussed in depth over the past few decades. However, most studies on the dependence of manufacturing systems ignored the dynamic characteristics (the production rhythm). Therefore, a reliability evaluation method that considers quality-reliability (Q-R) dependency of a multi-state manufacturing system is proposed in this paper. Q-R dependency contains two main characteristics: quality deviation and production rhythm. The stochastic-flow manufacturing network (SFMN) model is constructed to describe the interaction among machines, products, and buffers in a manufacturing system. Moreover, the quality state-space model and the usage of buffers are used to quantify the quality deviation and the production rhythm, respectively. Reliability evaluation method for multi-state manufacturing systems with Q-R dependency is proposed. Finally, an illustrative example is presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.