Simulating the Corrective Actions Affecting System Availability : A System Dynamics Approach

This paper aims to simulate vital corrective actions affecting the system availability through a System Dynamics (SD) approach based on the results obtained by analyzing the causal relationships among Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) elements. A Stock and Flow Diagram (SFD) has been developed, based on the results obtained by the Causal Loop Diagram (CLD) (Shaker et al., 2021), to simulate the behaviors of the system during a timeframe. The proposed approach has been examined in a steel manufacturing company. Different improvement scenarios, regarding applying the most necessary corrective actions, in terms of the strategic priority and possibility, to eliminate or relieve the root causes of the critical failure modes in a roller-transmission system, have been simulated and analyzed to choose the most effective scenario on the system availability. The results indicated the most effective corrective actions to remove or diminish critical failure causes that led to less reliability of the system. Findings also demonstrated the effects of various scenarios regarding applying different effective corrective actions to decrease the frequency of avoidable stoppage of the system and its failure rate and to increase the availability of the system measured by the two indicators of Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) and Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)