Classification of critical spares for aircraft maintenance

Abstract

Maintenance planning is a major aspect for the aircraft manufacturers and airlines. Not having adequate spare parts in the inventory for the scheduled maintenance could result in costly flight cancellation with a negative impact on airline performance. An excess of spare parts inventory, on the other hand, leads to a high holding cost. Since airline industries involve with a large number of parts and some of them are quite expensive, it is important to classify critical parts needed to be kept in the inventory with minimal system costs. This study focuses on classifying spare parts into three groups by using traditional, analytic hierarchy process (AHP), and data envelopment analysis (DEA) methods based on factors associated with spare parts: unit price, usage rate, lead time, and reliability. Results show that it is advantageous to use DEA method to classify the inventory.

Testing an AHP model for aircraft spare parts

“…Therefore, assessing the impact of spare part failure is vital. Rad et al, (2011) also suggest further research on aircraft spare part classification using other factors, such as reparability, scarcity, and part criticality.…”

“…Moreover, very few studies have investigated the inventory classification of aircraft spare parts (c.f. Wang and Kang, 2007;Rad et al, 2011), which leads this study to contribute to this specific underdeveloped field.…”

“…In the aviation industry, only a few studies have been conducted on aircraft spare part classification and Rad et al, (2011) developed an aircraft spare part classification using four factors: usage rate, unit price, lead time, and reliability. However, the criteria employed in the study might be assessed as incomplete by the aircraft industry sector as criticality is not included.…”

“…The MASTA approach is based on two steps, recognising criticality classes using AHP and a decision diagram and selecting an inventory management policy (Braglia et al, 2004). Wang and Kang (2007), and Rad et al, (2011) proposed the AHP method for classifying aircraft spare parts. Molenaers et al, (2012) classify spare parts into four different levels of criticality using a combination of AHP and a 3D decision diagram.…”

“…IATA (2015) reports that the average value of inventory is USD 2.6 million per aircraft. The unavailability of one component can lead to unproductive aircraft downtime (Rad et al, 2011), with a direct consequence on the company profit (Sarker and Haque, 2000). Therefore, inventory decision-making becomes critical in the aviation industry.…”