Supervisors: Dr Sarah Dunnett and Dr Lisa Jackson

It is becoming increasingly popular within industry for suppliers of products to lease these products as an integrated package that includes a service support system under a contract that guarantees a specified functional availability. It is therefore imperative that the supplier is able to predict the product availability and optimise the maintenance regime. In this project a probabilistic model will be developed, including service support systems, that can be used to determine the optimal system design and service support. The model will be developed for a fleet of automated guided vehicles. Such vehicles have various applications, such as moving goods around a warehouse and they generally operate in fleets.

A Monte Carlo simulation approach, with Petri Net modelling, will be used to model the system hardware and support services, including various maintenance regimes. Condition monitoring of system components and subsystems to provide information about the current state of the system will be included in the model. The different rates of degradation and failure of the various vehicles and their components will need to be accounted for, adding to the complexity of the problem.

If you are interested in the above project and require further information please contact Dr Sarah Dunnett: s.j.dunnett<στο>lboro.ac.uk 

Due to funding restrictions the studentship is available to fund the research for UK/EU nationals. Thestudentship covers tuition fees and provides a tax-free stipend of £13,863 p.a. for a three-year duration. Applicants must hold a good honours degree (first class or an upper second) in Engineering , Mathematics or Computer Science. The start date for the project is expected to be January 2015. Applications can be accessed on line at https://luis.lboro.ac.uk/web_apx/f?p=100:1