Modelling of repair and maintenance facilities location: An application in Gendarmerie Signal Corps

The Gendarmerie Signal Corps, who wishes to provide a more effective and quick communication service to Gendarmerie forces, is paying a particular attention in the repair and maintenance of communication equipments and in the site selection of repair center where the Signal Corps executes repairing and maintenance activities. An effective and fast communication system might be possible with increasing the usability of devices, namely with servicing faulty devices in a short period of time. The Gendarmerie Signal Corps is especially paying attention to depot and intermediate repair in order to repair communication equipments and get the equipments ready in the task field. Therefore, it has been proposed to develop a multiobjective programming model which considers the various objectives and criteria like the minimum transportation time and cost, intensity of equipment and short repair cycle time, as to generate solutions for selecting the location of depot repair center and allocating the intermediate repair centers to the depot repair center. The objective of this thesis study is to develop a modelling approach that can be used by the Gendarmerie Signal Corps in determining the location of the depot repair center and allocating the intermediate repair centers with respect to this center, while decreasing the transportation time and cost with repair cycle time and increasing the usability of devices. Thus, the communication service which is the responsibility of the Gendarmerie Signal Corps would be performed in a more effective and faster way and also the operational readiness of the Gendarmerie forces would be increased. When the model solved for one center to minimize the maximum distance, the distance is found 1073 km. Whereas, in the existing system this distance is 1410 km. However, one depot repair center is not enough for decreasing the transportation time or the distance to 600 km., the distance accepted by the private cargo companies as one day' s transportation distance. When the model solved for two center the maximum distance could be decreased to 628 km. However, the one day' s transportation distance cannot be achieved by two depot facilities. So the model was solved for numbers of Depot Repair Center and various transportation distances have been found.