Reactive scheduling of complex system maintenance in a cooperative environment with communication times

Abstract

This paper focuses on the problem of complex system maintenance in a cooperative environment composed of several decision centers, taking into account communication times. Maintenance activities generate a specific issue for the scheduling of tasks since they identify, dynamically, new tasks, or modify the duration of planned tasks. In addition, when an unexpected event is detected by a decision center, some modifications of the schedule required by this decision center may have consequences on tasks under the control of other decision centers. In fact, some constraints exist between the jobs under the control of different decision centers. Each modification of the execution of a job should be submitted to the approval of each concerned decision center, implying a communication time between all these decision centers. Nevertheless, these communication times may not be compatible with desired modifications. This is why we present an algorithm to ensure rescheduling feasibility, including communication times between decision centers for the maintenance of complex systems in a coordinated environment. Finally, we implement our algorithm on the industrial context of the TGV maintenance in the French railway company.