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Procedia Computer Science 000 (2023) 000-000

Procedia Computer Science 231 (2024) 415–420

The 10th International Symposium on Emerging Information, Communication and Networks

(EICN-2023)
The 10th International Symposium on Emerging Information, Communication and Networks
November 7-9, 2023, Almaty,
(EICN-2023) Kazakhstan
November 7-9, 2023, Almaty, Kazakhstan
Maintenance Process Analysis in a Port Cargo Company
Maintenance ProcessDiscrete
through Analysis in a Port
Event Cargo Company
Simulation
through Discrete Event Simulation
Hernan Corroteaa, Héctor Portalesa, Luis Amigoa, Gustavo Gaticaa, Alexander
b, c a c
Troncoso-Palacio
Hernan Corrotea a *, Daniela
, Héctor Portales a Mondragón
, Luis , Mariana
Amigoa, Gustavo Ramos
Gatica , Alexander
Troncoso-Palacio *, Daniela Mondragón , Mariana Ramosc
b, c
a
Faculty of Engineering - Universidad Andrés Bello, Antonio Varas 880 Providencia, Santiago 7500000, Chile
b
Productivity and Innovation Department, Universidad de la Costa, Barranquilla, Colombia
a
Faculty of Engineering
c - Universidad
Industrial Engineering Andrés Bello,
Department, Antonio
Instituto Varas 880de
Tecnológico Providencia, SantiagoMéxico
Pachuca, Hidalgo, 7500000, Chile
b
Productivity and Innovation Department, Universidad de la Costa, Barranquilla, Colombia
c
Industrial Engineering Department, Instituto Tecnológico de Pachuca, Hidalgo, México

Abstract
Abstract
Cargo transfer is a key procedure in port businesses; nevertheless, the electromechanical equipment employed for maintenance
should adhere to a set of standards to ensure its proper operation all the time, which may raise production costs. Because of this,
Cargo transfer is a key procedure in port businesses; nevertheless, the electromechanical equipment employed for maintenance
every improvement that enables minimizing production losses and expenses over the short, medium, and long time is a decisive
should adhere to a set of standards to ensure its proper operation all the time, which may raise production costs. Because of this,
choice that companies should consider becoming sustainable. Under this policy, the maintenance process has assumed a significant
every improvement that enables minimizing production losses and expenses over the short, medium, and long time is a decisive
role as an integral part of the manufacturing process and not only as a dependency of the company. In this study, proposals for
choice that companies should consider becoming sustainable. Under this policy, the maintenance process has assumed a significant
improving a port company's maintenance procedure will be analyzed using the discrete event simulation technique. The findings at
role as an integral part of the manufacturing process and not only as a dependency of the company. In this study, proposals for
the task execution stage reveal delays or queues that have a direct impact on the overall time necessary to accomplish maintenance.
improving a port company's maintenance procedure will be analyzed using the discrete event simulation technique. The findings at
The reason that the equipment in the locations is not available on time could be due to a lack of supplies or replacement parts
the task execution stage reveal delays or queues that have a direct impact on the overall time necessary to accomplish maintenance.
required to finish the repair. This has a negative impact on the scheduled maintenance times. Additionally, the simulation results
The reason that the equipment in the locations is not available on time could be due to a lack of supplies or replacement parts
show that incorporating one person into the process improves reaction times. However, the final recommendation is that a future
required to finish the repair. This has a negative impact on the scheduled maintenance times. Additionally, the simulation results
role or workload study should be carried out instead of hiring other employees and, if possible, redistributing workloads among the
show that incorporating one person into the process improves reaction times. However, the final recommendation is that a future
people who are part of the company.
role or workload study should be carried out instead of hiring other employees and, if possible, redistributing workloads among the
people who are part of the company.
© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
© 2024
This is anThe Authors.
open accessPublished by Elsevier
article under the CC B.V.
BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review
© 2023
This The Authors.
isresponsibility
an open accessPublished by Elsevier B.V.
under of article under
the scientific the CC BY-NC-ND
committee license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
of the Conference Program Chairs
This is an open
Peer-review access
under article under
responsibility theConference
of the CC BY-NC-ND license
Program (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review
Chairs
under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Conference Program Chairs
Keywords: Delays in maintenance; Discrete Event Simulation; Maintenance improvement; Modeling Maintenance Process.
Keywords: Delays in maintenance; Discrete Event Simulation; Maintenance improvement; Modeling Maintenance Process.

*Corresponding author. Tel: +57 3245674512

E-mail address: atroncos1@cuc.edu.co
*Corresponding author. Tel: +57 3245674512
E-mail address:
1877-0509 atroncos1@cuc.edu.co
© 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under
1877-0509 © 2023
responsibility of theThe Authors.
scientific Published
committee ofby
theElsevier B.V.Program Chairs
Conference
This is an open
1877-0509 access
© 2024 Thearticle under
Authors. the CC BY-NC-ND
Published license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under
by Elsevier B.V.
responsibility
This is an openof the scientific
access committee
article of CC
under the the Conference
BY-NC-ND Program
licenseChairs
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0)
Peer-review under responsibility of the Conference Program Chairs
10.1016/j.procs.2023.12.227
2416 Hernán Corrotea
Hernan Corrotea et
et al.
al. // Procedia
Procedia Computer
Computer Science
Science 000
231 (2023)
(2024) 000-000
415–420

1. Introduction

When operations conducted constantly throughout the year, the complexity of maintenance tasks grows [1].
Stopping the process to perform scheduled Preventive Maintenance (PM) could have a negative impact on the process
performance. Industries oldest used to solely perform Corrective Maintenance (CM corrective repair). Unexpected
process stoppages can give a company completely unsustainable due to the significant cost of production losses. To
balance equipment availability with minimal process disruption, maintenance modifications must made. For this
reason, the maintenance of machines evolves to achieve a balance and thus guarantee high availability and a low
percentage of stops to the process, but at the same time reduce costs to ensure profitability. [2]. The development of a
maintenance process model has become a fundamental research and discussion topic to achieve performance in
maintenance management [3].
The company under study has used corrective maintenance as its only strategy for a long time. But to achieve
process continuous improvement, the business would like to start with Planned Preventive Maintenance (PPM). Due
to these factors, it is critical to investigate and identify the deviations that raise production's indirect costs, impede the
completion of maintenance, and cause prolonged stops of critical equipment all of which lower production efficiency.
Obtaining this model will allow analyzing whether the process is working properly or presents deviations at any point.
Additionally, through this model, it will be possible to simulate the real behavior of the process in the face of changes
or improvements, prior to its implementation [4, 5, 6]
For this reason, it built a model simulation that will help find proposals for the improvement of the maintenance
process, by discrete events simulation. In addition, the model allows evaluation alternatives to reduce the indirect
costs generated to the production process. Iquique Terminal Internacional (ITI) is a for-profit company, where the
employees of the organization participate in one or more stages of the process to achieve the desired result. One of the
relevant processes that directly affect the operation is the maintenance process since they guarantee the availability
and reliability of their equipment within the production process. Therefore, the following methodology proposed.

2. Approach methodology

As part of the execution of this project, the following three-stage methodology is proposed to be considered: First,
data collection. The second step is to build a maintenance procedure template. Thirdly, the validity of the model will
be evaluated by evaluating the results of the suggestions. See Figure 1.

Fig 1. Approach methodology

3. Applying to the discrete event simulation approach Case

Phase 1: Consists of acquiring information. There is no question that information enables for the generation of
knowledge about how a process behaves over time. However, in the company, ITI has only had an ERP system for
information storage since December 2018, which is a limitation because it will only be able to collect this data.
The maintenance area oversees supporting the equipment that directly interacts with the process of transferring
containers and other oversized loads. The ITI company has categorized its equipment according to its criticality and
has defined mobile cranes as the most critical equipment. Therefore, since there are only 3 teams when a failure occurs,
production is automatically reduced to 2/3 of total production. Through the ERP software, it was possible to obtain all
the (WO) supported from December 2018 to May 2020.
 Hernan Corrotea et al. / Procedia Computer Science 231 (2024) 415–420 417
Hernan Corrotea et al. / Procedia Computer Science 000 (2023) 000–000

The typical amount of cycle time needed to do maintenance is another piece of knowledge gleaned from earlier
data. In corrective maintenance (CM) has extremely specific times, which can last for days, despite the
aforementioned. As a result, just the average repair time considered without taking the time to get the spare part into
account when gathering background information from specialists in the field. The delay caused by waiting for spare
parts or the manufacturing of unique parts can exist multiple cause [7]. The prevention (WO) execution interval for
any equipment assigned to scheduled preventive maintenance was finally determined to be every 500 hours.
Phase 2: In any scientific database, it is possible to find simulation models representing real processes [8, 9, 10].
However, each model has its own characteristics and details that need to be known so that it is built as close to reality
as possible. It is important to note that these details do not necessarily have to be exact, since approximations or
assertions could be fulfilled if the model were simplified without losing reliability in its results.
The model must be simple enough to be overseen by mathematical and statistical methods and at the same time
"realistic" enough so that the results obtained apply to real situations. The model was designed as a block-based
flowchart. The diagram can indicate the internal workings of the process. All the elements that participate or interact
within the process such as their declared inputs and outputs, in addition, these diagrams allow providing a graphic
representation of the parts of the process and how they interact with each other. The sub-processes that are part of the
complete maintenance process are four and identified as follows:
• Planning and execution of Preventive and Corrective Maintenance.
• New equipment acquisition.
• Buying and acquisition of inputs and spare parts.
• Operations support maintenance.
The Maintenance aims to ensure that all the assets or equipment that take part in the production process
continuously perform the functions for which acquired, without unexpected stoppages that could paralyze the
production process. Maintenance seeks to ensure the competitiveness of the company in the market by ensuring the
availability and reliability of the equipment, to following all safety and environmental regulations [11, 12]. Therefore,
this work will focus on the sub-process of Planning and Execution of Preventive and Corrective Maintenance because
it is the basis for achieving the main goal of the entire area.
It defines which will be the inputs that the process will have, for this shown which are the equipment’s that into the
process to do their own maintenance. Then, they will have three types of inputs, each one of them with five types of
elements repeated for each input. One execution phase of the work with their respective resource’s income. However,
there is an earlier filter that will be the one in charge to planning and ordering the income of the equipment, because
there is a limit of equipment’s to attend and most critical equipment that will have more priority to attended.
Mentioned is the following way:

Fig 2. Types of input to the maintenance process

According to the experience of the experts in the area, it is possible that while the execution of the work, will
discover failures that could be Plainfield for their later reparation that have to be fastest as possible, it established an
4418 HernánCorrotea
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(2024) 415–420

analysis phase that will allow to define it. In addition, to give more details, the resources are going to divided in
supplies (necessary elements to do the earlier maintenance) and spare parts (necessary elements to do the corrective
maintenance). Expressed in a block diagram, you have what exposed in the figure 7.

Fig 3. Proposal of the maintenance process model.

Phase 3: The SIMIO (Simulation In-Out) Due to the fact that the simulation model needs to fed with data like the
real ones, to continue with the simulation, assumptions are made considering discrete data. using random data
generation in the process flow simulator.
It counts with two teams, each one composed by 5 maintainers, with the next schedule:
Schedule team 1: Mon-Fri (08:00 hrs. to 12:30 hrs. and from 13:30 to 16:30 hrs.) and Saturdays (09:00 hrs.
to 14:00 hrs.)
Schedule team 2: Mon-Fri (09:00 hrs. to 13:00 hrs. and from 14:00 to 18:30 hrs.) Sundays and holidays they do not
work.
Each maintenance has to considerate a limited number of maintainers to execute the assigned tasks to each pattern
and a finite time to do the complete maintenance pattern. Times do not consider the supplies delivery necessary time
to do the works. It is considered only maintenance pattern each 500 hours for all equipment’s. There are inside the
workshop a space maximum of 3 equipment’s to do the maintenance. Every corrective maintenance is a priority into
the planification.
It found that the execution time of the earlier maintenance scheduled for each team will be with a triangular
statistical distribution. Events created for each maintenance type to do and for each equipment to attend, these events
imply the execution of the work to do. To simulate the run, it created subroutines which will allow to study the process
times and the different variables that interact in there. Finally, restrictions and limitations declared.

4. Results

For the analysis of the simulation, the data collected from 2019 was considered. The results obtained when
simulating the model show that statistically the average number of work orders is 48 for Preventive Maintenance and
207 for Corrective Maintenance. It is shown that the simulated model is remarkably close to reality, since there is a
margin of error of 6.67% and 2.98% respectively, giving assurance that the results obtained are valid.
When analyzing the simulation process, the appearance of queues in the arrivals of the maintenance execution
process is observed. Because the model was designed so that entry into this execution stage occurs when two
conditions are met: First, the equipment arrives, and then the spare parts or supplies necessary to carry out the assigned
work arrive. Under these conditions, it is possible to see that the queue is generated when the equipment arrives, giving
evidence of the delay in the delivery of spare parts, so this deviation in the process is one of the causes of the highest
 Hernan Corrotea et al. / Procedia Computer Science 231 (2024) 415–420 419
Hernan Corrotea et al. / Procedia Computer Science 000 (2023) 000–000

execution time of the work and, consequently, a drop in the availability of equipment and an increase in indirect
production costs.
This reflected in the time that the crane is in the system from the moment it arrives at the entrance of the process
to the moment it leaves; since one of the assumptions of the simulation corresponds to the fact that the execution times
of the work considered fixed. However, these times exceed 20 hours, therefore the delay is in the arrival of the
materials and this stage of the process must improve.
By going further on the deviation, it can note that today within the structure of the maintenance area there is no
position in charge of supply, purchases, or storekeeper. Consequently, the work conducted in part by the maintainers
and the area manager, without there being a real order of the existing warehouse or a survey of the supplies and spare
parts that are available. Therefore, within the improvement proposal, an experiment (scenario) generated where this
position of winery incorporated. When conducting the simulation, substantial improvements reached in the times of
the crane system.
The results of the simulation present a 13% reduction in the times where the cranes are within the system. This way
the availability of the most critical equipment increased and thus a reduction in indirect costs due to unexpected stops
in cases of failure. If these results brought to a stoppage of an hour due to an unexpected failure during crane operation,
it should find that there will be a 13% reduction in stoppage costs per hour.
Although the results have shown the importance of the position of the winemaker for the final times of execution,
it must analyze which is the best alternative to cover the new position.

5. Conclusions

In the current scenario where markets are competitive, any improvement that allows reducing losses and thus
reducing production costs in the short, medium, and long term, is a logical decision that companies must make to stay
current. Under this guideline, in recent years, maintenance has taken on a significant role and is no longer just an area
of the company but considered an important part of the production process.
A set of proposals for improvements to the maintenance process shown through a simulation of discrete events, the
current process simulated to study the behavior of the process and detect deviations within it. This objective achieved,
since when validating the model, it observed that it presents an acceptable error given the complexity of the flow and,
in turn, is capable of forecasting behavior of the system in the face of different proposed scenarios.
The results show how the delays or queues in the process directly affect the final maintenance execution time. Once
this deviation detected, it was possible to define that the delay focused on the arrival of the supplies or spare parts
necessary to conduct the respective maintenance. The foregoing affects the supply stage, where within the intervened
area not assigned to a specific position, which implies that there is no person responsible for organizing or supporting
a stock of critical supplies or spare parts. Although an unexpected stoppage or a failure cannot be 100% avoided in a
productive process, the times where the equipment stopped can reduced. Therefore, the incorporation of a winery or
supply manager is essential to develop any maintenance, be it preventive or corrective. This delay in the execution of
maintenance may be the cause of the operations area not delivering the equipment when maintenance is due, and
therefore, for the planned times for each maintenance not to meet.
Maintenance execution times can drastically reduce. by modeling an improvement scenario using a storekeeper
position, incorporating new personnel into the company is not a simple decision and must be well justified. For which,
it proposed to propose new scenarios for future work, such as moving worker functions, that is, eliminating the position
of a maintainer and incorporating a winemaker or managing a change of schedules in the work teams.

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the Andres Bello University of Chile, the Universidad de la Costa SIGME Research
Seedbed in Management and Business Improvement, and also the Delfin México program for all their contributing
knowledge to finish this research.

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