Study on scheduling algorithm of field maintenance service for agricultural machinery

According to the characteristics of maintenance service for agricultural machinery, the combinational optimization problem about uncertain number and travel routes of maintenance vehicles was studied. In order to improve the quality of maintenance service for agricultural machinery while reduce the total cost of maintenance service, a mathematical model of maintenance vehicles scheduling was constructed by considering both the constraint of customer’s need and maintenance cost. To solve specific problem of predicting the number of maintenance vehicles, a scheduling method based on genetic algorithm was proposed, including new chromosome coding scheme about uncertain number of vehicles and new crossover and mutation strategies that are used to ensure the diversity of the population. Then the coordination of customer satisfaction and maintenance cost was achieved by punitive action. Finally, compared with different cost parameters in the numerical case, the algorithm performance was analyzed. The experiment results showed that the algorithm could provide effective advices to agricultural machinery manufacturing enterprises about the number and routes of dispatching maintenance vehicles in field maintenance service especially in real-time environment.