Maintenance resource allocation using decentralised co-operative control

Discusses the scheduling of limited maintenance resources for a manufacturing process chain through negotiation between process units. The objective of the project is to resolve scheduling conflicts for maintenance of the process units, while still meeting their performance requirements as closely as possible. The conflict resolution is based on the process units generating multiple options to modify either their behaviours or schedules. These options are ranked by the process unit in order of preference based upon penalty functions. Combinations of these options are then examined until a feasible solution is found. Results to date have shown reductions in conflict of over 60% compared to a fixed maintenance schedule.