Maintenance logistics organization for offshore wind energy: Current progress and future perspectives

Logistics and supply chain management of maintenance is a very critical task in the offshore wind energy industry. A failure to deliver proper maintenance services may adversely affect the wind farm availability and thereby reducing power output as well as profitability. The organization of maintenance logistics for offshore wind farms has received a reasonable attention in the literature to date. The purpose of this article is to review the state-of-the-art of maintenance logistics in offshore wind energy. It proposes a classification scheme involving three echelons of strategic, tactical and operational decision-making. The strategic echelon deals with decisions regarding wind farm design for reliability, location and capacity of maintenance accommodations, selection of wind farm maintenance strategy, and outsourcing the repair services. The tactical echelon embraces spare parts inventory management, maintenance support organization, and all decisions regarding purchase or lease of maintenance resources. The operational echelon includes scheduling of maintenance tasks, routing of vessels, and measuring the maintenance performance. Our findings indicate that the strategic decisions of maintenance logistics have received the most attention in the literature, followed by the tactical and operational decisions. Also, three categories of selection of maintenance strategy, maintenance support organization and scheduling of maintenance tasks are the most addressed areas of research. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.