286 Preventive Maintenance Optimization Using Ant Colony Algorithm (PSAM-0182)

Meta-heuristic applications have evolved a lot nowadays. They are used in so many domains. However their parameter setting stills, till now, a serious problem which influences their efficiency and their attitude. Under the title of preventive maintenance optimization, the Ant Colony (AC) is used by Samrout et al as an optimization technique. It tries to optimize for each component of a system, the maintenance policy minimizing the cost function, with respect to the availability constraint (A(t) ≥ A₀, A₀ being a fixed lower limit) on a given mission time for the best intervention dates to preventively maintain a series-parallel system. The AC proves once again its efficiency, but the parameter setting's issue persists as a critical issue which needs more analysis. This paper offers a detailed study about the influence of the parameters on the AC operation. An experimental plan design is done. Preventive maintenance optimization domain, where the ant colony has been applied successfully by Samrout et al is chosen as an experimental environment.