Joint optimization of maintenance and production scheduling for unrelated parallel-machine system

This paper investigates integrated maintenance and production scheduling in an unrelated parallel-machine production environment. We address three different preventive maintenance (PM) policies, namely (1) PM at fixed predefined time intervals, (2) optimal PM period that maximizes machines’ availability, and (3) optimal PM period that maintains a minimum reliability threshold for a given production period t. We incorporate the three PM policies into a mixed-integer mathematical model that jointly optimizes maintenance and production scheduling. The objective is to minimize maximum completion time and maintenance costs. The weighted-sum method is adopted to joint these two objectives as they have different units. Due to the complexity of the proposed model, a problem-specific designed simulated annealing (SA) algorithm is used to solve it. The effect of the three adopted maintenance policies on the delivery times of products and cost of maintenance activities is illustrated through a small case study.