Optimal assignment of human resources for maintenance departments using fuzzy queuing systems

Maintenance-related costs are one of the main components of overhead costs and constitute an important part of a product’s actual cost. Therefore, making proper efforts to reduce and optimise maintenance costs could be one way of gaining competitive advantages. A major part of maintenance-related costs is the salaries paid to the workforce in the maintenance department. This paper seeks the optimal assignment of human resources to the maintenance department to reduce the related costs. First, we model the maintenance department using fuzzy queue models. Then, a cost function is proposed which includes the costs of workforce shortage and workforce overload. The optimal size of workforce is obtained by considering different numbers and choosing the one which minimises the total costs. Some parameters are fuzzy outputs of the queue models, which make fuzzy results of the cost function. In order to find the minimum fuzzy cost function, we use Lee and Li fuzzy ranking method. Finally, our model is tested in a spiral-tube company and a sensitivity analysis is performed.