The condition of complex products in the transport industry, such as train couplings or aircraft turbines, is not exactly determinable before their disassembly and diagnosis in a maintenance plant. Thus, planning and control of their regeneration is impeded since work plans and spare part demand result at short notice. This paper presents a novel method, which combines a planning approach, the in-house pooling of components, and a controlling approach, the sequencing of components, by means of event-driven simulation. Thereby, mean cycle time, mean tardiness and on-time delivery can be optimized under the consideration of the volatile conditions. © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.