A simulation model for
determining maintenance staffing
in an industrial environment
S. O. Duffuaa and A. Raouf
Systems Engineering Department
King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals
Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia
In a plant, the size of a maintenance staff
initst be related to the level of output. The
optimal level of maintenance is essential for
maximizing the output of the production
process. This paper develops a simulation
model to determine the size of a maintenance
crew. The heart of the simulation model is
the machine servicing model. The model is
applied to a local soft drink plant to deter-
mine the optimal number of their mainte-
nance crew, and the result of the study is
presented.
Keywords: optimal level, maintenance
crew, industrial environment, produc-
tion
Introduction
The size of maintenance department is a function of
amount of equipment that has to be maintained, the
variety of this equipment and the probability of its
breakdown. In a small company maintenance depart-
ment may consist of a few skilled men, whereas in a
large company which is machine-intensive, mainte-
nance department may consist of large number of
people of different skills i.e., electricians, milL wrights,
plumbers, etc. In such cases size of maintenance staff
has to be established so that work can be properly
scheduled. In fact, maintenance system is a system
operating in parallel to the production system, which
requires capacity planning amongst other aspects.
This paper develops a simulation model to determine
the optimal level of staffing of maintenance personnel in
an industrial environment. The heart of the simulation
model is the machine servicing model. This is a queuing
model with a finite population and multiservers. The
optimal level of maintenance staffing has been previ-
ously approached via the machine servicing model [2,
9]. Tlie authors in [9] utilized the steady state results for
the machine model to determine the optimal mainte-
nance staffing. This approach has two limitations: (1) the
steady state results for this model are known for few
interarrival and service time distributions, (2) the steady
state situation is an overall average and doesn’t reflect
the transient state, which is very close to daily operation.
For a review of queuing models refer to [4; 10].
Discrete event simulation is a natural framework for
estimating the needed crafts to perform maintenance
activities [3; 8]. Discrete event simulation has been
93
applied to many diverse situations which range from
simulating commercial laundry facility to simulating
neural network [1; 6]. It is suitable for the maintenance
situation because assumptions regarding the system in
steady state conditions are not required for the approach
of this paper. The purpose of this approach is to link the
staffing of the maintenance to production levels. This
will enable us to evaluate the effect of indirect labor on
the expected level of output.
In order to utilize the model presented in this paper,
the following steps are to be performed.
(a) A complete study of the department/plant in
order to determine the types of maintenance
crew required, the types of machines repaired,
the types of failure of each machine and their
effect on the production line.
(b) Outline the existing work order system and
define the logic of work assignment.
(c) Set up the relevant machine servicing model
after determining the failure rate of each ma-
chine, the service rate and the cost of each
machine being out of service.
(d) Develop the simulation software.
(e) Run the model to get the production runs and
from it find the optimal staffing pattern.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows: Section
2 introduces the machine servicing model. Section 3
develops the simulation model. Section 4 presents the
application of this model to a local soft drink plant.
Section 5 outlines the applicability of the machine
servicing model for determining the size of crafts
needed in a maintenance environment, and Section 6
concludes the paper.
Machine servicing queuing model
The following are the terminology and notation used:
La= queue length =
number of machines waiting
for service,
E = expectation operator,
L = E(N) Expected number of machines in the
=
queuing system,
Pn= probability that exactly n customers are in
the system,
W =
waiting time in the system,
w =
E(W),
W ~= waiting cost,
S~= service cost,
T~ =
total cost,
S = number of repairmen,
c~ cost of each repairman per unit time,
= Figure 1. Conceptual Solution Procedure for Many Waiting-
94
M =
number of machines
c= cost of waiting per unit of time (loss of
due to waiting of machine, I,
production)
W waiting time of machine, i, in the
q(i) =
queue.
The responsibility of maintaining in operational order
certain group of M machines by S repairmen with the
policy to repair each one it breaks down can be repre-
sented as a queuing model. The machines are consid-
ered as customers in the system. The repairmen are
considered as individual servers in the queuing system
if they work individually on different machines, or the
entire crew as a single server if they work together on
one machine. Also a set of r servers, r < S, could result if
part of the crew works together and the rest work
individually.
The input population for this model is finite, and the
queuing discipline is general (GD) in the sense that it
could be first in first out (FIFO) or last in first serve
(LIFS) or whatever policy the management sets for
serving the machines. The distribution of the interarrival
time is usually assumed to be exponential, but in our
case it can be any one of the known types of distribu-
tions. The service time distribution could come from any
of the known distributions. If the collected data do not
fit any one of the known distributions an empirical
distribution for the data can be developed and utilized.
In the case of the exponential interarrival and service
times, the model becomes a special case of the birth-
death process and steady state results for queue length,
average waiting time and Pnare given in [4]. Steady
state results for other distributions are developed in [5].
In order to utilize this model in the maintenance
environment, we have to relate the staffing level to the
production level. The decision regarding the amount of
service capacity (size of the maintenance crew) is based
on two considerations. The first is the cost of service,
and the second is the cost of machines waiting for
service which is directly related to production. This cost
could be regarded as the cost of lost production.
Usually the cost of service is easily obtained, and
given that the cost of waiting has been evaluated
explicitly, the objective would be to determine the level
of service (crew size) which minimizes the total ex-
pecteci cost of providing the service and waiting to be
served. This concept is depicted in Figure 1. Thus the
mathematical statement of the objective is to minimize
E(T~).
line Problemss
 Given the definition in Section 2, the total cost func- list 25 contains the event list. The attributes of all these
tion can be approximated by: lists are as follows:

The simulation model

The goal of the simulation model is to estimate the
optimal size of a maintenance crew in a plant. This is
achieved by estimating the delay of each machine in the
system. The delay in the system is the time from the
breakdown of a machine until it is repaired. Then the
number of servers and the waiting time are used to Additional software developed for the purpose of the
estimate the total cost. The simulation model is run simulation program are an arrival routine, departure
under different scenarios to obtain the least cost sce- routine and a report routine. The function of each
nario. A scenario consists of a given size of a crew for subroutine is outlined using flowcharts in Figures 2 - 5.
the maintenance. The total cost of the system is esti- Also we added a subroutine to SIMLIB which generates
mated from the model for this scenario. Several sce- random variables from the distributions such as the
narios will be run to determine the least cost scenario. negative exponential, normal, uniform, Weibull and an
The simulation model is of the discrete event type. empirical distribution for any given set of data.
The first step in constructing this model is to express the
real system in terms of its key events. An event is
defined as an instantaneous occurrence which may
change the state variables of the system. The state
variables of the system are (1) status of the repairman,
(2) the number of machines waiting in queue to be
repaired (if any), (3) the time of breakdown for each
machine in the queue, and (4) the number of machines
in the queue.
In the model there are three types of events, namely,
the arrival of a machine to the queue, departure of a
machine from the system (service completion) and the
end of the simulation. An arrival is an event because it
causes the (state variable) status to change from idle to

busy or the (state variable) number of machines in the

queue. Correspondingly, a departure is an event
because it causes the status to change from busy to idle,
or the number of machines in the queue. The end of the
simulation is considered as a dummy event for termina-
tion of the simulation.
The model is implemented on IBM 3033 utilizing the
Simulation Language SIMLIB (Simple Simulation
Language). SIMLIB provides many of the features
found in special purpose simulation languages. The
heart of SIMLIB is the real array Master which is of
dimension (1000,10). In this array we can store up to
1000 records, each record with up to ten attributes.
Linkage Storage Scheme is used to allow for storing up
to twenty-five lists. However, list twenty-five is always
reserved for the event list.
This model requires (2 + n) lists of records, where n is
the number of repairmen for a particular simulation run.
List number one contains the records of the machines I ,

waiting in the queue. Lists 2 through (n + 1) are used to Figure 2. Flowchart for the main program - main program
indicate whether the repairmen are busy or not. Finally

95
 Figure 5. Report subroutine _

Application of the model to a local soft drink

plant
The model presented in Sections 2 and 3 is applied to
Figure 3. Flowchart of the arrival subroutine a local soft drink plant. This plant produces several
kinds of beverages in bottles or cans. The plant has two
types of assembly lines, the can line and the bottle line.
The model is applied to the can assembly line.
The first step in the production of can beverages is
that the packages of empty cans are brought to a
conveyor by means of a fork lift truck. Then the pack-
ages are depalletized by a depalletizer machine. Next
the empty cans are passed through a rinsing machine
and washed. The washed cans are passed by the filling
machine where 72 valves fill the cans with the syrup at
one time. Then the filled cans are sealed and sent back to
the conveyor, where they are inspected by ’Filitic’
machine which uses gamma rays to inspect the content
of the cans and the leakage. The inspected cans enter the
’warmer’ to double check for leakage. After leaving the
warmer the cans are inspected again by a Filitic ma-
chine, and sent to a vinio jet machine to print the date of
production on the cans. In the last step the cans are
packed in boxes for distribution.
The production process on the assembly line can stop
for following reasons:
I. Mechanical breakdown in
’

(1) Depalletizer
Figure 4. Flowchart of the departure subroutine (2) Empty conveyor ..,

96
 (3) Rinser .
Table 1. Machine #1
(4) Filler
(5) Seamer
(6) Full conveyor
(7) Warmer
(8) Packer
(9) Shrink wrap
(10) Tray conveyor
(11) Palletizer
(12) Refrigeration.
II. Raw Material:
Air, CO2, electrical, water, etc.
III. Programmed Stopping:
Change over, clean up, others.
Table 2. Machine #2
The mechanical breakdown must be fixed by a trained
mechanic, while the other causes of down time (raw
material, programmed stopping) can be fixed by a
worker.
The cost of each repairman (mechanic) is 2500 Saudi
Riyals (SR) per month for 8 hours work in each day. The
loss of profit due to down time at the can line is SR.108/
min estimated as follows:

Can line output capacity is 36 cartons/minute

Net profit from each carton is SR.3.00
Loss of profit - 36 x 3 SR.108.oo/minute
=

The data for the interarrival time for service and the
service time for the thirteen machines is obtained from
the production department. From data analysis we
found the critical machines are (1, 4, 5, 6, 8). The rest of
the machines seldom break or cause any significant Table 3. Machine #5
down time.
The distribution of the interarrival time for service
and the service time for each machine is developed
using a software developed for &dquo;goodness of fit&dquo;. We
found that the interarrival time distribution for machine
1 is negative exponential with mean 313, for machine 4
is negative exponential with mean 457, for machine 5 is
a Weibull with parameters 0.839 and 20.35, for machine
6 is Weibull with parameters 0.6482 and 418.32, for
machine 8 is negative exponential with mean 484.
The service time for each machine is generated from
the discrete distribution which takes the values and the
probabilities given in Tables 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5.
Using these distributions, the cost of each repairman
and the loss due to down time, we ran the simulation
model for two months under different scenarios. the maintenance activities the maintenance load can be
divided into types of jobs requiring different crafts.
Summary of the results is given in Table 6. Craft types include machinist, electrical, instrument,

Application of the machine servicing model to the
maintenance staffing problem
The machine servicing model with general input
distribution and general servicing distributions fits the
environment of maintenance operations. Depending on
building and janitorial. Instead of representing mainte-
nance in a micro level as machines needing work, the
maintenance work can be represented as five types of
machines depending on the maintenance jobs. Hence
we can have a hypothetical machine representing a class
or type of work. As an example electrical type of jobs

97
 Table 4. Machine #6
Table 5. Machine #8
,~ ~ ......:
Table 6. Summary of the output
can be grouped together and be represented by a single
machine. The number of machines is determined by the
types of work/crafts needed. The frequency and the
type of work at the maintenance department for each
machine can be estimated from historical data of the
maintenance load [7].
The modification needed to the classical machine
servicing model is to define machines in terms of the
type of work needed to keep the plant running. Each
type work requires a specific craft. The model can be
generalized to estimate the size and the level of training
for crafts by dividing each machine (work type/craft)
into smaller machines depending on the level of
specialty needed for each craft. Figure 6 is a schematic
diagram for the above representation.
It can be seen that the simple machining servicing
model can be restructured and extended to represent a
realistic maintenance situation in order to estimate the
size and specialty of crafts needed to perform mainte-
nance effectively.
98
Figure 6. Representation of maintenance load and staffing in
a machine servicing framework
Conclusion
The model developed has been verified by running it
for a long time under simplifying conditions such as
experimental interarrival time for maintenance jobs and
experimental service time, and we obtained the usual
steady state results.
A validation test has been conducted by running the
model under the same conditions as the plant studied in
this paper, and the behavior of the model was similar to
what is observed by the operation people at the plant.
The attributes looked at in the validation were the
percent down time per month and utilization of the
mechanical operation.
A simulation model which provides a framework for
estimating optimal maintenance crew size has been
developed and has been applied to a local soft drink
plant. Also the proposed approach offers a way to link
maintenance directly to production and decide the
maintenance crew size based on its effect on the target
production. The model can provide the means to
integrate the maintenance resource structure, mainte-
nance strategy and overall plant objectives. The
applicabilities of the machine servicing model for
determining maintenance staffing in realistic mainte-
nance environment have been demonstrated. The model
suggests that in such complex situations simulation is
one of the viable approaches for determining mainte-
nance staffing.
Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the support by the Depart-
ment of Systems Engineering, King Fahd University of
Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran 31261, Saudi Arabia.
Assistance provided by Khalid Al-Bassam and
Mohammad Junaid towards completion of this study
and computation is acknowledged as well.
References
1. Cheng, T. C. E.; Feiring, B. R., "Simulation Modelling of a
Commercial Laundry Facility", International Journal of
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2. Duffuaa, S. O., Raouf, A., "A Simulation Model for
Determining Optimal Staffing in an Industrial Environ-
ment", Proceedings of the 10th National Computer Conference
and Exhibition, Jeddah, Feb. 1988, pp. 551-563.
3. Garzia, M. R., "Discrete Event Simulation Methodologies
and Formalisms", Simulation Digest, Vol. 21, No.1,1990,
pp. 3-13.
4. Hamady, T., Operations Research: An Introduction, Third
Edition, MacMillan Publishing, 1992.
5. Hiller, Liberman, Introduction to Operations Research, 2nd
Edition, Holden Day, Inc.,1980.
6. House, D. E., "Simulating Neural Network Learning with
Test/N.L", Simulation Digest
, Vol. 20, No. 2,1989, pp. 22-
30.
7. Kelly, A., Maintenance and Its Management, Conference
Communication, Monks Hill, England, 1989.
8. Law, M. L., Kelton, W.D., Simulation Modeling and Analysis,
McGraw-Hill, New York,1982.
9. Raouf, A., "Methods of Predicting Indirect Labor Staffing,"
Univ. of Windsor, I. R. I. Report, 1968.
10. Saaty, T. L., Element of Queuing Theory with Application,
Dover Edition, 1983.
SALIH OSMAN DUFFUAA is an
Associate Professor at the Department of
Systems Engineering, King Fahd
University of Petroleum & Minerals,
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He has a Ph.D.
degree in Operations Research from the
University of Texas at Austin, in 1982. He
has Diploma in Statistics and B.S. in
Mathematics for the University of
Khartoum, Sudan. He has published over
25 papers in the area of Operations Research. His current
areas of interest are: simulation, scheduling, mathematical
programming, and maintenance engineering.
ABDUL RAOUF is a Professor of
Systems Engineering at the King Fahd
University of Petroleum & Minerals,
Dhahran, Saudi Arabia since 1984. Before
joining this university, he was Professor
and Chairman of the Industrial Engineer-
ing Department at the University of
Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He is actively
engaged in teaching, supervising ~ ~
graduate students and consultancy. He
has over 100 articles published in various professional
journals. His current areas of interest are: optimizing produc-
tion system and maintenance engineering.
99