Equipment assignment to multiple overhaul blocks in series systems

This paper covers the development of a heuristic method for grouping equipment into blocks for application of preventive maintenance overhauls within a series system, so as to minimize total maintenance‐related costs for the system. Previously, group technology (GT) concepts have not been applied to this problem, and this research investigated the applicability of such concepts to the block overhaul problem (specifically, the SLCA method was applied). Performance of the heuristic is analyzed with respect to runtime and solution quality.