Inspired by collaborative initiatives in the military domain, we analyze a setting in which multiple different players (e.g., Ministries of Defence) have to carry out preventive maintenance jobs. Each player is responsible for one job, with a job-specific minimal frequency and with maintenance costs, consisting of a job-specific variable component and a fixed component, which is the same for all jobs and independent of the set of jobs executed. Players can collaborate by clustering jobs, where maintenance in such a cluster is performed at the frequency of the job with highest minimal frequency. Players can benefit from such clusters if savings in fixed costs outweigh the increase in maintenance costs of those jobs that are forced to execute maintenance at a higher frequency. We investigate how to allocate the cost savings resulting from an optimal clustering of collaborating players. By analyzing axiomatic properties of such allocation methods, we conclude that certain intuitive methods may be met with resistance in practice. To address this, we focus on cost allocation methods such that no subgroup of players has a financial incentive to ‘split off’ and not cooperate with other players. Using insights from cooperative game theory, we find such allocation methods.
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