Maintenance modeling for hot rolling production lines with constraint of auxiliary resources

•A dual-rule based OM model is proposed for hot rolling production lines.•The impact from moving and setting up the auxiliary resources is deeply explored.•The rule for OM priority is developed to obtain the PM grouping sequence.•The rule for OM evaluation is developed to group the PM activities.•Two variable maintenance time windows are defined to identify different PM requirements. This paper develops an Opportunistic Maintenance (OM) model for the hot rolling production line consisting of multiple bulky multi-component equipment under the constraint of limited auxiliary maintenance resources. Because the duration for moving and setting up the auxiliary resources is non-ignorable, a distinctive dual-rule based OM policy is proposed to involve the impact of the distance between components on the using of the auxiliary resources. The rule for OM priority is firstly introduced to obtain the dynamic maintenance grouping sequence for the components. This is different from the existing OM policies in which the grouping sequence for the components is usually ignored. The rule for OM evaluation is then developed to further judge whether the components can be allocated into the OM group based on the dynamic grouping sequence, during which two variable maintenance time windows are newly defined to identify the different maintenance requirements brought by two types of preventive maintenance opportunities. Finally, a case study is illustrated to show the cost-effectiveness of the proposed dual-rule based OM model.