Performance modeling and availability analysis of shoe upper manufacturing unit

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to make a performance model of a shoe upper manufacturing unit of a shoe manufacturing industry by computing both the availabilities, i.e. time dependent system availability (TDSA) and the long‐term availability. Design/methodology/approach – The present work is carried out by developing performance model based on Markov birth‐death process. The unit consists of four subsystems. The first order governing differential equations are derived using the mnemonic rule and further solved by adaptive step‐size control Runge‐Kutta method to calculate the TDSA, while the long‐term availability is calculated using normalizing condition, initial boundary conditions and recursive method. Both the availabilities are considered for system's performance criterion. Findings – The subsystem A, i.e. sewing machine is the most critical from maintenance point of view, which has more impact on the system's performance as compare to other subsystems. The repair priorities of other subsystems have also been proposed. Practical implications – These methods can also be used to find out the performance of other manufacturing industries. Originality/value – The results of the present work are very useful for finding the critical subsystem and its effect on the system performance in terms of availability. Further, based on findings the maintenance priorities of various subsystems can be decided.