Unrelated parallel-machine scheduling with aging effects and multi-maintenance activities

Machine maintenance is often performed in manufacturing to prevent premature machine failures with a view to sustaining production efficiency. In this paper we study the parallel-machine scheduling problem with aging effects and multi-maintenance activities simultaneously. We assume that each machine may be subject to several maintenance activities over the scheduling horizon. A machine reverts to its initial condition after maintenance and the aging effects start anew. The objective is to find jointly the optimal maintenance frequencies, the optimal positions of the maintenance activities, and the optimal job sequences such that the total machine load is minimized. We apply the group balance principle to obtain the optimal positions of the maintenance activities and the number of jobs in each group in the scheduling sequence on each machine. We provide an efficient algorithm to solve the problem when the maintenance frequencies on the machines are given.