TY - JOUR
T1 - Overhaul planning and exchange scheduling for maintenance services with rotable inventory and limited processing capacity
AU - Erkoc, Murat
AU - Ertogral, Kadir
N1 - Funding Information:
This research was partially supported by the Science Fellowships & Grant Programs Department of The Scientific & Technological Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK), BIDEB #2221 . We are grateful to two anonymous referees whose comments have significantly contributed to improvement of our paper.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
PY - 2016/8/1
Y1 - 2016/8/1
N2 - Maintenance, repair and overhauling (MRO) of high cost equipment used in many industries are typically subject to regulations set by local governments or international agencies. For example in the aviation industry, critical equipment must be overhauled at certain intervals for continuing permission of use. As such, the overhaul must be completed by strict deadlines. Since the overhaul is typically a long process, MRO companies may implement exchange programs where they carry so called rotable inventory for exchanging expensive modules that require overhaul so that the equipment can continue its services with minimal interruption. The extracted module is overhauled in a capacitated facility and rotated back to the inventory for a future exchange. Since both the rotable inventory and the overhaul process capacity are limited, it may be necessary to carry out some of the exchanges earlier than their deadlines. Early exchanges results in a decrease in the maintenance cycle time of the equipment, which is not desirable for the equipment user. In this paper, we propose an integer programming model so as to minimize total earliness by generating optimal overhaul start times for rotables on parallel processing lines and exchange timetables for orders. We show that the LP relaxation of the proposed model has the integrality property. We develop a practical exact solution algorithm for the model based on a full-delay scheduling approach with backward allocation. The proposed procedure is demonstrated through both a numerical study and a case study from the airline MRO service industry.
AB - Maintenance, repair and overhauling (MRO) of high cost equipment used in many industries are typically subject to regulations set by local governments or international agencies. For example in the aviation industry, critical equipment must be overhauled at certain intervals for continuing permission of use. As such, the overhaul must be completed by strict deadlines. Since the overhaul is typically a long process, MRO companies may implement exchange programs where they carry so called rotable inventory for exchanging expensive modules that require overhaul so that the equipment can continue its services with minimal interruption. The extracted module is overhauled in a capacitated facility and rotated back to the inventory for a future exchange. Since both the rotable inventory and the overhaul process capacity are limited, it may be necessary to carry out some of the exchanges earlier than their deadlines. Early exchanges results in a decrease in the maintenance cycle time of the equipment, which is not desirable for the equipment user. In this paper, we propose an integer programming model so as to minimize total earliness by generating optimal overhaul start times for rotables on parallel processing lines and exchange timetables for orders. We show that the LP relaxation of the proposed model has the integrality property. We develop a practical exact solution algorithm for the model based on a full-delay scheduling approach with backward allocation. The proposed procedure is demonstrated through both a numerical study and a case study from the airline MRO service industry.
KW - Aviation
KW - Earliness
KW - Full-delay scheduling
KW - Maintenance planning
KW - Rotable inventory
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U2 - 10.1016/j.cie.2016.05.021
DO - 10.1016/j.cie.2016.05.021
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84969972471
VL - 98
SP - 30
EP - 39
JO - Computers and Industrial Engineering
JF - Computers and Industrial Engineering
SN - 0360-8352
ER -