Query: Optimisation of preventive maintenance scheduling

Candidate papers:

abstract: Preventive maintenance (PM) scheduling is a very challenging task in semiconductor manufacturing due to the complexity of highly integrated fab tools and systems, the interdependence between PM tasks, and the balancing of work in process (WIP) with demand/throughput requirements. In this paper, we propose a two level hierarchical modeling framework. At the higher level is a model for long term planning, and at the lower level is a model for short term PM scheduling. Solving the lower level problem is the focus of this paper. We develop mixed integer programming (MIP) models for scheduling all due PM tasks for a group of tools, over a planning horizon. Interdependence among different PM tasks, production planning data such as projected WIP levels, manpower constraints, and associated PM time windows and costs, are incorporated in the model. Results of a simulation study comparing the performance of the model based PM schedule with that of a baseline reference schedule are also presented.
author_names: Emmanuel Fernandez-Gaucherand

Michael C Fu

Steven I Marcus
title: Optimal preventive maintenance scheduling in semiconductor manufacturing
venue: IEEE Transactions on Semiconductor Manufacturing
year: 2004

abstract: A railway system needs a substantial amount of maintenance. To prevent unexpected breakdowns as much as possible, preventive maintenance is required. In this paper we discuss the preventive maintenance scheduling problem (PMSP) where (short) routine activities and (long) unique projects have to be scheduled in a certain period. To reduce costs and inconvenience for the travellers and operators, these activities should be scheduled together as much as possible. We present two versions of the PMSP, one with fixed intervals between two consecutive executions of the same routine work, and one with only a maximum interval. Apart from giving a math programming formulation for the PMSP and for its extension we also present some heuristics. In addition, we compare the performance of these heuristics with the optimal solution using some randomly generated instances.
author_names: Gabriella Budai

Dennis Huisman

Rommert Dekker
title: Scheduling preventive railway maintenance activities
venue: 2004 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37583)
year: 2004

abstract: Two types of preventive maintenance policies are considered. A policy is defined to be optimum if it maximizes "limiting efficiency," i.e. fractional amount of up time over long intervals. Elementary renewal theory is used to obtain optimum policies. The optimum policies are determined, in each case, as unique solutions of certain integral equations depending on the failure distribution. It is shown that both solutions are also minimum cost solutions when the proper identifications are made. The two optimum policies are compared under certain restrictions.
author_names: Richard E Barlow

Larry C Hunter
title: Optimum Preventive Maintenance Policies
year: 1960

abstract: The simultaneous scheduling of resource constrained maintenance and operations is an emerging theory that is attracting the attention of both researchers and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to capture the uncertainty in the development of a model that schedules both preventive maintenance and operational activities. Fuzzy logic is employed to transform the human expertise into IF THEN rules. The approach has the advantage of revealing semantic uncertainty with the associated non specifying measures. The methodology applied tracks the error values in terms of results in linguistic variable. The result obtained indicates the feasibility of tracking the uncertain measures in the model discussed. Thus, the study may be applicable to both production system and transportation organizations that are engaged in both maintenance and operational activities. The research has serious implication in terms of the ability to monitor the imprecision that were introduced in the previous models. This obviously provides a more reliable framework for researchers and practitioners interested in maintenance scheduling operation. The paper is new in that, it demonstrates the application of fuzzy logic in a form that was never documented.
author_names: Sunday Ayoola Oke
title: A FUZZY LINGUISTIC APPROACH OF PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE SCHEDULING COST OPTIMISATION
year: 2007

abstract: The simultaneous scheduling of resource constrained maintenance and operations is an emerging theory that is attracting the attention of both researchers and practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to capture the uncertainty in the development of a model that schedules both preventive maintenance and operational activities. Fuzzy logic is employed to transform the human expertise into IF THEN rules. The approach has the advantage of revealing semantic uncertainty with the associated non specifying measures. The methodology applied tracks the error values in terms of results in linguistic variable. The result obtained indicates the feasibility of tracking the uncertain measures in the model discussed. Thus, the study may be applicable to both production system and transportation organizations that are engaged in both maintenance and operational activities. The research has serious implication in terms of the ability to monitor the imprecision that were introduced in the previous models. This obviously provides a more reliable framework for researchers and practitioners interested in maintenance scheduling operation. The paper is new in that, it demonstrates the application of fuzzy logic in a form that was never documented. INTRODUCTION Many organization worldwide are shifting their focus from the traditional way of running the business to a modern and pro active approach that guarantees the continued existence of the business. Traditionally, businesses are managed with the sole aim of making profit. This viewpoint is fading away in view of the emerging business improvement concepts that has dominated organizational practices worldwide. Such concepts include business process reengineering, total quality management, etc. As such the customer is at the central focus of the company's objective with the aim of satisfying and exceeding customers' requirements. This condition has created intense competition among rival organizations. Therefore, for businesses to stay afloat, customer satisfaction should be the central focus. While satisfying the customer, the profit maximization objective of company would automatically be achieved since an increased customer patronage is envisaged. In an effort to continue in business, company managers are re engineering their processes for efficiency and effectiveness. The maintenance culture is one of the subsystems of the organization that has received an increased attention in recent times. Fortunately the viewpoint of the maintenance function as a "bottomless pit of expenses" is fading away. Maintenance is now viewed as a "value adding activity" to the organization. In other to improve efficiency of operations, proper scheduling of facilities should be done. In scheduling facilities, optimal approaches are sought for such that minimum cost is expended on activities and maximum results obtained. Until recently most approaches utilized in maintenance scheduling are near optimal (see Anily et al. 1998, 1999) This is largely due to the non polynomial problem that usually exists in problem formulation. KATHMANDU UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY VOL.I, No.III, JANUARY, 2007. 2 Fortunately, Charles Owaba (2002) has recently proposed a breakthrough methodology that uses the basic principles of Gantt Charting. Since the development of the original model numerous efforts have been made by authors in extending its framework. Such extensions have incorporated a reviewed cost dimensions, and alternative consideration without the use of Gantt charting principles. Unfortunately, none of the articles have considered the uncertain nature of the problem semantic uncertainty in the model framework is an important concern that is worthy of analytical investigation (Oke, 2004a,b) This important gap in the maintenance scheduling literature is addressed in the current work. In particular, the fuzzy logic concept is applied to the simultaneous scheduling of resourceconstrained maintenance and operations. The linguistic variables are used to substitute for the key parameters and variable of the Gantt charting model. The model that evolves from the current research is of immense benefits both to the academic community and the industry. With the model, the real value of measure could be easily captured while the decisions based on the modeling information will be more reliable than the former model that does not contain fuzzy logic concepts. Literature review: The maintenance scheduling literature has a variety of applications (Zurn and Quintana, 1975; Wang et al. 2002; Walker et al. 2001a,b) These diverse applications include aircraft maintenance, process industry, vehicle fleet maintenance, railway track maintenance, power generation, pavement maintenance, highway maintenance, refinery and production facilities (Alfares, 1999; Ashayeri, et al. 1996; de Campos and Belhot, 1994; Gunn and Lee, 1991; Lee, 1991; Lake et al. 2000, 2001; Lake and Ferreira, 2001; Creemers et al. 1994) An attempt to codify the maintenance scheduling literature portrays a line of inquiry that has grown in volume and in depth. Despite the immense resources allocated to the study of maintenance scheduling during the past 30 years, a more intensive study into some deep structures is still required. Subsequently, a number of theoreticians proposed models for scheduling maintenance (Zurn and Quintana, 1977; Stremel and Jenkins, 1981; Stremel, 1981; Ram and Olumolade, 1987; Duffuaa and Al Sltan, 1997) Duffuaa and Ben Daya (1994) proposed a model, which is similar to that of Hariga in that it focused on non identical production units (Duffuaa and Ben Daya, 1994) The model is developed for the joint overhaul problem by incorporating the cost of production, and the cost of coordination. The model obtains lower costs of two examples. Among the deficiencies of these models is the fact that no evidence of machine dominance concept is considered. Cheung and Hui (2004) investigated a chemical production site from the perspective of loss minimization. The paper proposes a multi period mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model as an aid to optimize short term maintenance schedule. In a study by El Sharkh and El keib (2003) the concept of a fuzzy evolutionary programming based solution methodology for security constrained generator maintenance scheduling was explored. The paper presents the fuzzy model with uncertainties in the load and fuel and maintenance costs. The technique results are fuzzy optimal cost range that reflects the problem uncertainties. It solves a decomposed maintenance model of two interrelated subproblems, namely the maintenance and the security constrained economic dispatch problem. Dieulle et. al. (2003) focused on the development of a new probabilistic method based on the semi regenerative property of the evolution process. In order to calculate the long time expected cost per unit of time, the authors use a recent result generalizing the well known theorem that expresses KATHMANDU UNIVERSITY JOURNAL OF SCIENCE, ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY VOL.I, No.III, JANUARY, 2007. 3 the cost criterion as equal to the ratio of the expected cost on renewal cycle over the expected cycle duration. Numerical experiments show that there exists a set of parameters (the critical threshold and the parameters of maintenance scheduling function) which lead to a minimal cost. El Sharkh and El Keib (2000) considered an evolutionary programming (EP) based technique to the unified model of the maintenance scheduling (MS) problem of power generation and transmission systems. The Hill climbing technique (HCT) is used in conjunction with the EP to find a feasible solution in the neighbourhood of the new feasible solutions during the solution process. The work by Kobbacy et al. (1997) is concerned with the development of a realistic preventive maintenance (PM) scheduling model. A heuristic approach for implementing the semi parametric proportional hazard model (PHM) to schedule the next preventive maintenance interval on the basis of the equipment's full condition history was introduced. These models are then used within a simulation framework to schedule the next preventive maintenance interval. The results indicate a higher availability for the recommended schedule than the availability resulting from applying the optimal PM intervals as suggested by using the conventional stationary models. Olorunniwo and Izuchukwu (1991) applied the concept of maintenance improvement factors to preventive and overhaul maintenance. The authors developed mathematical models that are used to generate preventive and overhaul maintenance schedules. Examples are provided to demonstrate the sensitivity of the schedules to model parameters. Ashayeri et al. (1996) reported on simultaneous planning of preventive maintenance and production in a process industry environment. The authors developed a mixed integer linear programming model. The model scheduling production jobs and preventive jobs, while minimizing costs associated with production back orders, corrective maintenance and preventive maintenance. The model takes into account the probability of a breakdown given by the last maintenance period. The formulation of the model is flexible so that it can be adapted for several production situations. However, the deterministic model discussed does not afford insight into the nature of deterioration of machines. A common form of machine deterioration is stochastic but many studies have assumed linear deterioration for ease of modeling. Model framework: From the original proposal by Charles Owaba (2002) the problem is defined as follows: Given a set of machines for preventive maintenance and operations in T contiguous periods, limited periodic maintenance capacity (Aj) limited budgetary allocation (Ba) limited manpower resources (Mr) duration (Bir) per maintenance visit, arrival period Kij) and the number of visits per machine
title: A FUZZY LINGUISTIC APPROACH OF PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE SCHEDULING COST OPTIMISATION
year: 2007

abstract: Abstract A new methodology designed to optimize both the planning of preventive maintenance and the amount of resources needed to perform maintenance in a process plant is presented. The methodology is based on the use of a Montecarlo simulation to evaluate the expected cost of maintenance as well as the expected economic loss, an economical indicator for maintenance performance. The Montecarlo simulation describes different failure modes of equipment and uses the prioritization of maintenance supplied, the availability of labour and spare parts. A Genetic algorithm is used for optimisation. The well known Tennessee Eastman Plant problem is used to illustrate the results.
author_names: DuyQuang Nguyen

Miguel J Bagajewicz
title: Optimization of preventive maintenance scheduling in processing plants
year: 2008

abstract: Abstract Offshore wind farm is an emerging source of renewable energy, which has been shown to have tremendous potential in recent years. In this blooming area, a key challenge is that the preventive maintenance of offshore turbines should be scheduled reasonably to satisfy the power supply without failure. In this direction, two significant goals should be considered simultaneously as a trade off. One is to maximise the system reliability and the other is to minimise the maintenance related cost. Thus, a non linear multi objective programming model is proposed including two newly defined objectives with thirteen families of constraints suitable for the preventive maintenance of offshore wind farms. In order to solve our model effectively, the nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II, especially for the multi objective optimisation is utilised and Pareto optimal solutions of schedules can be obtained to offer adequate support to decision makers. Finally, an example is given to illustrate the performances of the devised model and algorithm, and explore the relationships of the two targets with the help of a contrast model.
author_names: Shuya Zhong

Athanasios A Pantelous

Michael Beer

Jian Zhou
title: Constrained non linear multi objective optimisation of preventive maintenance scheduling for offshore wind farms
year: 2018

abstract: Preventive maintenance planning, and production scheduling are two activities that are inter dependent but most often performed independently. Considering that preventive maintenance, and repair affect both available production time, and the probability of machine failure, we are surprised that this inter dependency seems to be overlooked in the literature. We propose an integrated model that coordinates preventive maintenance planning decisions with single machine scheduling decisions so that the total expected weighted completion time of jobs is minimized. Note that the machine of interest is subject to minimal repair upon failure, and can be renewed by preventive maintenance. We investigate the value of integrating production scheduling with preventive maintenance planning by conducting an extensive experimental study using small scheduling problems. We compare the performance of the integrated solution with the solutions obtained from solving the preventive maintenance planning, and job scheduling problems independently. For the problems studied, integrating the two decision making processes resulted in an average improvement of approximately 2% and occasional improvements of as much as 20% Depending on the nature of the manufacturing system, an average savings of 2% may be significant. Certainly, savings in this range indicate that integrated preventive maintenance planning, and production scheduling should be focused on critical (bottleneck) machines. Because we use total enumeration to solve the integrated model for small problems, we propose a heuristic approach for solving larger problems. Our analysis is based on minimizing total weighted completion time; thus, both the scheduling, and maintenance problems favor processing shorter jobs in the beginning of the schedule. Given that due date based objectives, such as minimizing total weighted job tardiness, present more apparent trade offs conflicts between preventive maintenance planning, and job scheduling, we believe that integrated preventive maintenance planning production scheduling is a worthwhile area of study.
author_names: C Richard Cassady

Erhan Kutanoglu
title: Integrating preventive maintenance planning and production scheduling for a single machine
venue: IEEE Transactions on Reliability
year: 2005

abstract: recent offerings by competing publishers. There are numerous and thoughtprovoking exercises 457 by my count. Many are based on the example cases from Chapter 2. The basic statistical groundwork for reliability textbooks has been well laid by Leemis (1995) Lawless (1982) and Nelson (1982) among others. Meeker and Escobar (1998) have, in my opinion, the best general survey. Recent books like that by Modarres, Kaminskiy, and Kritsov (1999) are extending the material into new, focused applications. The reviewed book does not compete with the 1998 book by Meeker and Escobar, which it cites often and which covers the statistical issues completely. Instead, it places reliability analysis in a much broader and more complete framework. It is so comprehensive that it would provide material for more than a two semester graduate sequence in reliability. It integrates several threads of operations research statistics, probability, stochastic processes, and optimization and it will find a warm welcome in the best graduate programs. I strongly recommend it.
author_names: Michael Tortorella
title: Reliability Theory: With Applications to Preventive Maintenance
venue: Technometrics
year: 2001

abstract: Maintenance engineers have been applying treatments to both flexible and rigid pavements ever since there have been these types of pavements. The types and application of various treatments for both corrective and preventive maintenance have been the subject of research studies over a number of years, and many publications have reported these findings. FHWA recently initiated an effort to encourage departments of transportation at all levels to begin, or extend, the practice of preventive maintenance, since there simply is not enough money available to continue the types of maintenance currently employed. Flexible pavement preventive maintenance is specifically addressed, including the types of pavements that are candidates for preventive maintenance, the available treatments, where and when they should be used, their cost effectiveness, factors to be considered in selecting the appropriate treatment strategy, and a methodology to determine the most effective treatment for a particular distress.
author_names: R Gary Hicks

James S Moulthrop

Jerome F Daleiden
title: Selecting a Preventive Maintenance Treatment for Flexible Pavements
year: 1999