Operational simulations of planned maintenance for vehicles

A method for simulating operational impact of planned maintenance, the method comprising:

• providing a plurality of operational models comprising:
• a route model comprising information describing a route schedule for a plurality of vehicles;
• a preparation model comprising information describing tasks to prepare a vehicle for departure;
• and
• a planned maintenance model comprising information describing a plurality of maintenance tasks, each maintenance task associated with information describing a task time, wherein the information describing the task times for the plurality of maintenance tasks comprises a probability distribution of task time for each maintenance task;
• using the plurality of operational models, executing an operational simulation that generates interactions between a route simulation and a planned maintenance simulation for a plurality of routes in the route schedule, wherein executing the operational simulation comprises:
• simulating performance of a scheduled maintenance task for a vehicle of the plurality of vehicles by:
• performing a probabilistic drawing of the probability distribution of task time corresponding to the scheduled maintenance task to determine a simulated task time for performing the scheduled maintenance task;
• and
• determining an effect of the simulated performance of the scheduled maintenance task on the route simulation;
• and
• visually outputting to a display device changes to the route simulation from the determined effect of the simulated performance of the scheduled maintenance task.

A computing system for simulating operational impact of planned maintenance for a plurality of vehicles, the computing system comprising:

• processing circuitry configured to:
• execute an operational simulation that generates interactions between a route simulation and a planned maintenance simulation for a plurality of routes for the plurality of vehicles, wherein executing the operational simulation comprises:
• determining a current route of the plurality of routes being simulated in the route simulation;
• upon determining that a scheduled maintenance task is required to be performed in the current route, simulating performance of the scheduled maintenance task, comprising:
• performing a probabilistic drawing of a probability distribution of task time corresponding to the scheduled maintenance task to determine a simulated task time for performing the scheduled maintenance task;
• and
• calculating maintenance time based on available resources, wherein the maintenance time comprises the simulated task time and a delay time;
• determining an effect of the simulated performance of the scheduled maintenance task on the route simulation;
• and
• visually outputting to a display device changes to the route simulation from the determined effect of the simulated performance of the scheduled maintenance task.