Distributed Scheduling for Reactive Maintenance of Complex Systems

This correspondence presents a distributed scheduling algorithm for reactive maintenance of complex systems. The algorithm uses an iterative bidding procedure to assign operations of maintenance jobs to engineers with partially overlapped skill sets. In each round, an unassigned operation is selected based on the overlapping degree of engineers’ skill sets on the operation and the operation’s average processing time among capable engineers. Engineers’ availability and cost information are used to determine the winner of an assignment. The effectiveness of this approach is demonstrated through a computational study. Prototype implementation and applications to real-world domains are discussed.