1. Introduction
The various aspects of maintenance as well as traditional maintenance strategies are treated in the existing literature.
Some studies deal with the importance of maintenance activity to maintain a production system. The control of
production systems leads to uncertainties such as the variation of demand and system failure. Some approaches
have been proposed for the determination of the economic quantity of production for various products on simple or
multiple machines in the context of manufacturing ‘just in time’, as in the work of Abdulnour et al. (1995). Today’s
global competition means that companies have to aim for product quality and cost cutting while supplying the
customer on time. The maintenance policy has become one of the strategic functions of the company, because it
represents the means to maintain a level of acceptable availability. The stopping or abnormal functioning of a
production system and the subsequent missing of deadlines induce a penalty that companies are no longer able to
support. To remain competitive, a company should not take the risk of stoppages, but have a plan to reduce/
eliminate them and analyse their effects in the long term.