Maintenance grouping for multi-component systems with availability constraints and limited maintenance teams

The paper deals with a maintenance grouping approach for multi-component systems whose components are connected in series. The considered systems are required to serve a sequence of missions with limited breaks/stoppage durations while maintenance teams (repairmen) are limited and may vary over time. The optimization of the maintenance grouping decision for such multi-component systems leads to a NP-complete problem. The aim of the paper is to propose and to optimize a dynamic maintenance decision rule on a rolling horizon. The heuristic optimization scheme for the maintenance decision is developed by implementing two optimization algorithms (genetic algorithm and MULTIFIT) to find an optimal maintenance planning under both availability and limited repairmen constraints. Thanks to the proposed maintenance approach, impacts of availability constraints or/and limited maintenance teams on the maintenance planning and grouping are highlighted. In addition, the proposed grouping approach allows also updating online the maintenance planning in dynamic contexts such as the change of required availability level and/or the change of repairmen over time. A numerical example of a 20-component system is introduced to illustrate the use and the advantages of the proposed approach in the maintenance optimization framework. •A dynamic maintenance grouping strategy is proposed for multi-component systems.•A grouping approach based on rolling horizon, GA and MULIFIT algorithms is proposed.•Impacts of availability and/or limited repairmen constraints are highlighted.•An optimal planning under availability and/or limited repairmen constraints is given.•The maintenance planning can be dynamically updated in the presence of dynamic contexts.