An Automated Procedure to Establish Workzone Boundaries for Air Force Facilities Maintenance Operations

Abstract

The problem of balancing maintenance workloads among geographical workzones on an air force base is discussed. An algorithm is presented which assigns facilities to workzones such that facilities assigned to the same workzone satisfy two conditions:

• 1) The facility must be in close geographical proximity to the other facilities in the workzone.

• 2) The sum of the expected maintenance workloads of all facilities assigned to a workzone should have little variation between workzones.

A brief introduction to the air force base civil engineering function is followed by an explanation of the procedure for workzone determination presently prescribed for worldwide application. Existing research on the ‘loading problem’ is reviewed and determined to be of limited application to the problem at hand.

Two mathematical programming formulations are presented to aid in defining the quantitative aspect of the problem and to illustrate the complexity of the problem.

A heuristic algorithm is then presented which incorporates a Pythagorean calculation to determine the unassigned facility in closest geographical proximity to the last assigned facility. If the facility found has an expected maintenance workload smaller than the unused capacity in the workzone currently being filled, it is assigned to that workzone. Otherwise, it is the first facility assigned to a newly opened workzone. In turn its closest unassigned facility is considered for assignment to the workzone currently being filled.

The system was used in a test application at Maxwell Air Force Base, Montgomery, Alabama. It is shown to produce very useful results with significantly less time and effort than presently required of the manual workzone determination system.