Simulation-based evaluation of an integrated planning and scheduling algorithm for maintenance projects

The field of maintenance project planning and scheduling is attracting increasing attention due to ever growing competition among manufacturing organisations. There is a lack of studies that has tackled all the aspects of maintenance project implementation such as costs, resources, down times, uncertainties, operational constraints, among others. Therefore, an approach which uses a unitary structuring method and discrete event simulation to integrate relevant data about the maintenance projects is proposed. The results of the evaluation, on a case from paper-pulp industry, have shown that the proposed approach is able to overcome most of the issues of maintenance planning and scheduling.