Innovative Distributed Maintenance Concept: From the design to cost optimisation

TL;DR

This paper presents an integrated heuristic framework for optimizing distributed maintenance in geo-distributed systems, reducing costs significantly through strategic location and scheduling decisions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel dual-entity maintenance structure and a heuristic for location and capacity planning, combined with a two-stage algorithmic approach for cost minimization.

Findings

Cost reduction of up to 50% demonstrated.

Framework scalable for systems with over 30 GDPS.

Applicable to high-availability sectors like aerospace and energy.

Abstract

This study proposes an integrated heuristic framework for the strategic optimization of distributed maintenance operations in geo-distributed production systems (GDPS). It introduces a dual-entity maintenance structure comprising a Centralized Maintenance Workshop (CMW) and a Mobile Maintenance Workshop (MMW), aimed at minimizing total long-term maintenance costs. The cost function incorporates transport, operations, and downtime penalties, optimized via a two-stage algorithmic approach: a Maintenance Planning Algorithm (MPA) based on predictive maintenance scheduling, and a Long-term Heuristic Scheduling Algorithm (LHSA) addressing a capacitated vehicle routing problem with time windows (CVRPTW). A novel contribution includes a heuristic for CMW location determination using the weighted barycentre of site failure probabilities and a discrete selection of MMW capacities. Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) and a divide-and-conquer heuristic are utilized to handle the NP-hard nature of the problem. Experimental validation using Weibull-distributed failure data and various cost scenarios demonstrates that the proposed Optimised Maintenance and Capacitated Routing (OMCR) framework can reduce lifecycle maintenance costs by up to 50%, with increased scalability for systems exceeding 30 GDPS. The framework is applicable to sectors requiring high availability and centralized servicing, including aerospace, railway, and energy industries.