We had a problem to be solved: the thermal generator maintenance scheduling problem [Yam82]. We wanted to look at stochastic methods and this paper will present three methods and discuss the pros and cons of each. We will also present evidence that strongly suggests that for this problem, tabu search was the most effective and efficient technique. The problem is concerned with scheduling essent...

This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the co...

Production scheduling and preventive maintenance planning decisions are inter-dependent but most often made independently. Given that maintenance affects available production time and elapsed production time affects the probability of machine failure, this interdependency seems to be overlooked in the literature. We propose an integrated model that simultaneously determines production schedulin...

We investigate the problem of scheduling the maintenance of edges in a network, motivated by the goal of minimizing outages in transportation or telecommunication networks. We focus on maintaining connectivity between two nodes over time; for the special case of path networks, this is related to the problem of minimizing the busy time of machines. We show that the problem can be solved in polyn...

The majority of scheduling literature assumes that the machines are available all the time. In this paper, we study a Flow Shop scheduling problem where the machine maintenance must be performed within certain intervals and hence the machine is not available during the maintenance periods. Our purpose is to schedule jobs and maintenance jobs minimizing some performance measures. The objective f...

An important aspect of infrastructure management is the scheduling of maintenance tasks. That implies the allocation of tasks to different crews or machines and the determination of an execution order. To this end, different aspects have to be considered. On the one hand, the maintenance operator is interested in reducing the direct maintenance costs. On the other hand, priorities must be consi...

The following work proposes a (max,+) optimization model for scheduling operations on an oil seaport considering flexible maintenance activities on valves. The work is based on previous results for the same case study, where fixed maintenance was studied in the framework of scheduling oil transfer operations through a pipeline network. The case study is a Venezuelan seaport for oil export and r...

We consider the scheduling problem of setting the upper bounds for the actual processing times and maintenance times under assumption that the actual processing times of a job is a position-dependent power function. The maintenance duration is a position-dependent exponential function. Through building a corresponding jobs scheduling model, we found the scheduling problem can be transformed as ...

Most production scheduling problems, including the standard flexible job-shop scheduling problem (FJSP), assume that machines are continuously available. However, in most realistic situations, machines may become unavailable during certain periods due to preventive maintenance (PM). In this paper, a flexible job-shop scheduling problem with machine availability constraints is considered. Each m...

Production scheduling and maintenance management are responsibilities of different functions often corresponding to departments a manufacturing company [...]