Graduation Year

2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree

M.S.I.E.

Degree Granting Department

Industrial Engineering

Major Professor

Grisselle Centeno, Ph.D.

Co-Major Professor

Paul McCright, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Jose Zayas-Castro, Ph.D.

Keywords

Allocation of resources, Time standards, Process standards, Bus transit, Forecasting

Abstract

The projected increase of population in the United States and particularly in the state of Florida shows a clear need of improvement in mass transportation systems. To provide outstanding service to rides, well maintained fleet that ensures safety for riders and other people on the streets is imperative.

This research presents an information support system that assists maintenance managers to review and analyze data and evaluate alternatives in order to make better decisions that maximize efficiency in operations at transportation organizations. A system that consists of a mathematical scheduling model that interacts with a forecasting model and repair time standards has been designed to allocate resources in maintenance departments. The output from the mathematical models provides the data required for the database to work.

Although the literature presents several studies in the field of maintenance scheduling and time standards, it stops short in combining these approaches. In this research, mathematical methods are used to forecast repair jobs occurrence to react to increments in service demand. Furthermore, an integer programming scheduling model that uses the data from both, the developed time standards and the forecasting model is presented. The information resulting from the models is entered to a database to create the information support system for transit organizations. The database gives the scenarios that facilitate optimizing the allocation of jobs in the facility and determines the best workforce for each required task.

Information was obtained from observations at three transit facilities in the Central Florida area; the model developed is tested in their scenario by using historical data of the maintenance jobs currently performed.

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