Resources assignment model in maintenance activities scheduling

Abstract

This paper proposes an analytical model for resources assignment in the context of maintenance activities scheduling. It takes into account the human as well as material resources availability constraints. It allows the decision maker to consider not only the preventive maintenance activities but also the potential failures which may occur during the scheduling horizon. Opportunistic maintenance may be considered as an option to improve the occupational rate mainly for maintenance operators. Additional constraints such as the completion time of some specific maintenance activities and the earliest starting works on a given machine may easily be considered in the model. Recall that the main purpose of this paper is to suggest an improved model for resources assignment to be implemented into a planning and scheduling module in CMMS software. The proposed model generates a feasible plan and makes sensitivity analysis possible in order to take into account the material and human resources fluctuations. A numerical example has been treated in order to illustrate the modelling process and to validate the coherence of the model. An attempt is made to develop a generic model which must be flexible and user friendly. Authors are investigating many other extensions of this work to fulfil some specific needs for the company which develops CMMS software. For the illustrative example presented in this paper, the explicit form of the mathematical model is provided in the Appendix of the paper.

Keywords:

• resource requirement planning
• resource scheduling
• maintenance
• availability
• modelling and optimisation

Acknowledgments

Authors would like to thank the referees for their valuable comments. This research is supported by National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).