Preemptive multi-skill resource-constrained project scheduling of marine power equipment maintenance tasks1

The shipbuilding industry, characterized by its high complexity and remarkable comprehensiveness, deals with large-scale equipment construction, conversion, and maintenance. It contributes significantly to the development and national security of countries. The maintenance of large vessels is a complex management engineering project that presents a challenge in lowering maintenance time and enhancing maintenance efficiency during task scheduling. This paper investigates a preemptive multi-skill resource-constrained project scheduling problem and a task-oriented scheduling model for marine power equipment maintenance to address this challenge. Each task has a minimum capability level restriction during the scheduling process and can be preempted at discrete time instants. Each resource is multi-skilled, and only those who meet the required skill level can be assigned tasks. Based on the structural properties of the studied problem, we propose an improved Moth-flame optimization algorithm that integrates the opposition-based learning strategy and the mixed mutation operators. The Taguchi design of experiments (DOE) approach is used to calibrate the algorithm parameters. A series of computational experiments are carried out to validate the performance of the proposed algorithm. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and validity of the proposed algorithm.