A data-driven strategic planning tool for purchasing and maintenance of mobile equipment

Project summary:

Mobile equipment, such as snow plows and motor graders, is a vital asset of the Hennepin County transportation department. To consistently provide reliable road services, the fleet managers need to maintain and replace the equipment in a timely and economic fashion. The trade-off between service quality and cost needs to be carefully evaluated. The current practices are mostly based upon experiences, and no widely accepted standard procedure is available. There is a growing need to apply scientific methods to analyze the massive amount of data collected by the transportation department and use optimization models to assist the fleet manager and policy makers to make better decisions. The project is identifying and documenting the county's current practice of purchasing and maintaining mobile equipment, developing performance metrics to evaluate the current policies, and proposing guidelines to assist fleet managers and administrators to make optimal decisions subject to budget constraints and service-level requirements.