Abstract
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to implement a strategic decision-making framework by selecting clusters of maintainable machines and scheduling their maintenance as part of a company's manufacturing strategy.
Design/methodology/approach Multi-criteria clustering problem in conjunction with the application of a group technology is used to establish clusters of maintainable machines based on their need for maintenance according to the type of failures they can encounter.
Findings Using the concept of group technology in conducting preventive maintenance will result in the grouping of machines according to the impact of a failure based on the criteria specified by the decision makers. Accordingly, it will facilitate the process of executing the maintenance itself by ordering spare parts and informing the maintenance personnel which will lead to minimize the maintenance cost.
Originality/value The results presented in this paper are reliable, objective may be used to minimize the total cost of conducting preventive maintenance in a manufacturing environment.