Discrete-event simulation-based method for staffing highway maintenance crews
First Claim
1. A method for determining a staffing pattern that specifies a number of maintenance crews to be recruited by a highway maintenance department to adequately and efficiently handle work of a maintenance speciality and allocates said number of maintenance crews to divisions of said highway maintenance department, using a discrete-event simulation and an optimization technique, whereby resources can be utilized most effectively to render a state highway network of a predetermined performance level comprising the steps of:
- making determinations that includes the steps of identifying said maintenance speciality, establishing a standard crew for said maintenance speciality, estimating a standard productivity rate for said standard crew, establishing an optimum maintenance workload for said standard crew, estimating costs of delaying maintenance of said maintenance speciality, and determining a planning period,building a model for said maintenance speciality that considers the steps of outlining a repair request system, preparing input data, and setting up said model,providing a change control mechanism to select and control effects of changes within said repair request system to control the execution of said discrete-event simulation,outputting information from said discrete-event simulation including performance measures of said repair request system,and performing the optimization which includes using said optimization technique to determine said number of maintenance crews for said maintenance speciality.
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Abstract
A maintenance management system is disclosed for staffing highway maintenance crews using discrete-event simulation and optimization techniques. Conveniently, the system is organized in four stages; making determinations, model building, simulation model, and experimentation and analysis. Determinations support setting agency'"'"'s own standards regarding maintenance including identifying maintenance specialities, establishing standard crews, setting standard productivity rates, estimating optimum maintenance workloads, estimating costs of delaying maintenance, and deciding the planning period. Model building involves outlining the repair request system including highway system configuration, organization structure, crew assignments, input data, and maintenance model. The simulation model executes an initialization routine and events and runs the events through a time and event schema until the event queue in the simulator is emptied. The experimentation and analysis stage includes designing experiments, generating data, and employing optimization techniques to determine the optimum size of the maintenance staff.
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Citations
18 Claims
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1. A method for determining a staffing pattern that specifies a number of maintenance crews to be recruited by a highway maintenance department to adequately and efficiently handle work of a maintenance speciality and allocates said number of maintenance crews to divisions of said highway maintenance department, using a discrete-event simulation and an optimization technique, whereby resources can be utilized most effectively to render a state highway network of a predetermined performance level comprising the steps of:
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making determinations that includes the steps of identifying said maintenance speciality, establishing a standard crew for said maintenance speciality, estimating a standard productivity rate for said standard crew, establishing an optimum maintenance workload for said standard crew, estimating costs of delaying maintenance of said maintenance speciality, and determining a planning period, building a model for said maintenance speciality that considers the steps of outlining a repair request system, preparing input data, and setting up said model, providing a change control mechanism to select and control effects of changes within said repair request system to control the execution of said discrete-event simulation, outputting information from said discrete-event simulation including performance measures of said repair request system, and performing the optimization which includes using said optimization technique to determine said number of maintenance crews for said maintenance speciality. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17)
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18. A simulation-based tool for determining a staffing pattern that specifies a number of maintenance crews that sufficiently and efficiently take care of a maintenance speciality and a distribution of said number of maintenance crews among divisions of a highway maintenance department, whereby maintenance work of a state highway network can be achieved effectively comprising:
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determinations including the steps of identifying said maintenance speciality, establishing a standard crew for said maintenance speciality, estimating a standard productivity rate for said standard crew, establishing an optimum maintenance workload for said standard crew, estimating costs of delaying maintenance of said maintenance speciality, and determining a planning period, a model for a repair request system that formulates a configuration of said state highway network, defines an organization structure of said highway maintenance department, defines a logic for work assignments, and prepares input data to set up said model, a change control mechanism to select and control effects of changes within said repair request system, a discrete-event simulator including an event queue containing an ordered list of simulation events, and a clock containing the time of said simulation events, means for running said discrete-event simulator, means for outputting information regarding performance measures of said repair request system, and means for determining said number of maintenance crews based on criteria including the summation of said cost of delaying maintenance and the cost of hiring said number of maintenance crews, and predetermined values of said performance measures.
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Specification