Maintenance Scheduling

Maintenance scheduling helps companies plan when to perform maintenance on each machine to optimize their particular goals. Depending on the company’s priorities, they may schedule maintenance to maximize profits, minimize costs, or maximize the lifespan of the equipment.

When companies attempt to optimize maintenance scheduling, they may encounter several common challenges. These include:

• Resource Constraints: Companies have limited labor, budgets, and time. For example, an airline may only have maintenance teams at certain airports. Airplane maintenance schedules must account for the geographic distribution of those teams and ensure that airplanes are in the appropriate airport when they need maintenance.
• Restrictions on Downtime: Certain equipment must have maintenance scheduled on a regular basis due to safety regulations (e.g., after a certain number of flight hours).
• Uncertainty: Maintenance tasks may take longer than anticipated, throwing off the schedule. Schedules must account for this variability and make the company resilient in the face of unanticipated delays.

While companies could employ one of several maintenance scheduling strategies, mathematical optimization has several strengths in addressing this issue. Mathematical optimization can:

• Be Proactive Instead of Reactive: Companies can approach maintenance scheduling strategically to optimize what is important to them. They might choose to maximize profits or minimize downtime depending on their priorities. Regardless, optimization lets them plan with their goals in mind, rather than responding to issues as they arise.
• Accommodate Constraints: Operations researchers can build mathematical optimization models that account for resource constraints, legal or safety restrictions, geographical distribution, and other non-negotiable maintenance scheduling requirements.
• Explore Trade-Offs: Mathematical optimization models can help teams identify potential trade-offs (e.g., labor vs. equipment costs) to identify the optimal path for a company’s strategy.

While many industries can benefit from optimized maintenance scheduling, the ones that gain the most from this approach are equipment-heavy firms. This includes:

• Airlines: Airplanes must receive maintenance after a certain number of flight hours, and maintenance can affect fuel efficiency. In addition, airlines also need to ensure coverage of popular routes during the right times.
• Utilities: Power companies can schedule maintenance for various components of the grid while maximizing power generation and transfer.
• Railways: When a railroad undergoes maintenance, trains cannot pass through. Optimal Solutions, a consulting firm, helped a railway company schedule rail maintenance to minimize downtime and maximize train throughput.
• Manufacturing: Factories can schedule equipment maintenance that maximizes production output or minimizes work stoppages.

Software company Polymathian leveraged Gurobi to help a complex, multi-user mining supply chain operation navigate a complex but optimized scheduling strategy. This increased their efficiency by 10-30%.

To learn more about how Gurobi-powered optimization can support your maintenance scheduling, check out more of our customer case studies.