Machines and facilities are physically or chemically degenerated by continuous usage. The representative type of the degeneration is the wearing of tools, which results in the process mean shift. According to the increasing wear level, non-conforming products cost and quality loss cost are increasing simultaneously. Therefore, a preventive maintenance is necessary at some point . The problem of determining the maintenance period (or wear limit) which minimizes the total cost is called the ‘process mean shift problem’. The total cost includes three items: maintenance cost (or adjustment cost), non-conforming cost due to the non-conforming products, and quality loss cost due to the difference between the process target value and the product characteristic value among the conforming products. In this study, we set the production volume as a decreasing function rather than a constant. Also we treat the process variance as a function to the increasing wear rather than a constant. To the quality loss function, we adopted the Cpm+, which is the left and right asymmetric process capability index based on the process target value. These can more reflect the production site. In this study, we presented a more extensive maintenance model compared to previous studies, by integrating the items mentioned above. The objective equation of this model is the total cost per unit wear. The determining variables are the wear limit and the initial process setting position that minimize the objective equation.

Machines and facilities are physically or chemically degenerated by continuous usage. One of the results of this degeneration is the process mean shift. By the result of degeneration, non-conforming products and malfunction of machine occur. Therefore a periodic preventive resetting the process is necessary. This type of preventive action is called ‘preventive maintenance policy.’ Preventive maintenance presupposes that the preventive (resetting the process) cost is smaller than the cost of failure caused by the malfunction of machine. The process mean shift problem is a field of preventive maintenance. This field deals the interrelationship between the quality cost and the process resetting cost before machine breaks down. Quality cost is the sum of the non-conforming item cost and quality loss cost. Quality loss cost is due to the deviation between the quality characteristics from the target value. Under the process mean shift, the quality cost is increasing continuously whereas the process resetting cost is constant value. The objective function is total costs per unit wear, the decision variables are the wear limit (resetting period) and the initial process mean. Comparing the previous studies, we set the process variance as an increasing concave function and set the quality loss function as Cpm+ simultaneously. In the Cpm+, loss function has different cost coefficients according to the direction of the quality characteristics from target value. A numerical example is presented.