Optimal maintenance planning and crew allocation for multipurpose batch plants

A mathematical programming approach to optimize process plant performance subject to equipment failure is presented. The optimal production planning and scheduling in multipurpose process plants involves the efficient utilization of assets and resources to produce a number of products so as to satisfy market demands while optimizing a performance criterion. However, the degree of utilization of process plant components, within the time horizon of operation, critically depends on the level of equipment availability. The interactions between production and maintenance planning as well as the necessary links to quantify the strong interactions between them are studied. The preventive maintenance planning and crew allocation problem are used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. The overall problem is first formulated as an optimal control problem by integrating an aggregate production planning model with a continuous time Markov chain maintenance model. The resulting problem is then transformed into a mixed-integer linear programming model by using an Euler discretization scheme and appropriate lineraizations of bilinear terms. Finally, extensions to include design aspects are also discussed. The applicability of the proposed approach is demonstrated by a number of illustrative examples.