The optimization of a maintenance policy related to a global service contract

Abstract

With refer to a Global Service Contract between a Service Provider and a Logistic Company, the purpose of the present paper is to develop an optimization model aimed to minimize the maintenance related total cost. In particular, such contract requires the supplying of a mandatory set of corrective maintenance services on a set of equal vehicles, in a fixed time horizon. The considered problem is formulated by a non-linear constrained mathematical model that, for large practical systems as the one herein considered, becomes difficult or very hard to solve by mathematical resolution approach. For this reason, a specific resolution approach based on a constrained genetic algorithm is herein developed to solve the treated problem. The obtained results show that meaningful cost reductions can be achieved by using the proposed approach.