Minimizing total flow time and maximum tardiness with periodic maintenance

Abstract

PurposeIn today's industry, a machine breakdown is common for a machine running a long period of time without maintenance. To avoid a sudden breakdown, periodic maintenance is usually performed in the production system. This paper aims to find a set of efficient schedules that considers both jobs and maintenance simultaneously.Design/methodology/approachThis paper addresses a real‐life scheduling problem in a plastic company. An algorithm based on the variable range technique is developed to solve the problem by providing a small set of efficient schedules.FindingsOnce maintenance is performed, the job being processed must be stopped. This will result in some jobs being late or tardy and a relatively larger flow time is generated. Therefore, how to minimize these two criteria in the production system becomes an important issue in the company. Computational results show that problems with larger maintenance intervals and smaller maintaining time can produce a smaller number of efficient schedules.Practical implicationsIt is seen that scheduling maintenance will result in some jobs being tardy and a larger flow time is generated. A decision maker can easily select a preferred schedule from the small set of efficient schedules. The proposed algorithm is appropriate not only for the studied company but also for those companies where periodic maintenance is required.Originality/valuePresents an algorithm to find a small set of efficient schedules.