Index policies for the maintenance of a collection of machines by a set of repairmen

Index policies for the maintenance of a collection of machines by a set of repairmen

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Article ID: iaor20061556
Country: Netherlands
Volume: 165
Issue: 1
Start Page Number: 267
End Page Number: 284
Publication Date: Aug 2005
Journal: European Journal of Operational Research
Authors: , ,
Keywords: scheduling, markov processes, programming: dynamic
Abstract:

A collection of M machines which deteriorate under usage is maintained by a set of R repairmen who may have other tasks to perform. Maintenance interventions will improve a machine's condition and may preempt costly breakdowns. The problem of scheduling such interventions to minimise the total expected discount cost incurred in operating the machines over an infinite horizon is formulated as a Markov Decision Process which has the form of a restless bandit problem. We outline an approach to the development of maintenance policies based on simple machine indices in the form of a fair charge for a maintenance intervention in the machine's current state. Closed form indices are derived for two particular models. Numerical investigations demonstrate the strong performance of the derived index heuristics.

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