Spare parts management for technical systems: resupply of spare parts under limited budgets

Abstract

In this paper, we study the operational availability of a complex technical system consisting of several components. The components are subject to breakdowns, and hence for each component a limited number of spare parts are held in stock. If a system's component fails and cannot be replaced immediately, due to a lack of spares, the system becomes unavailable until a new component is installed. Failed components are condemned and hence, to keep the spare parts stock at an appropriate level, new components have to be purchased. We assume that only a limited annual budget is available for procurement, while furthermore procurement requires a considerable lead time. We investigate what budgets are needed to attain a target availability level for the system. In addition, we develop various operational strategies for spending the annual budget during each year. Numerical results indicate t.hat the so-called Balance Focussed St.rategy provides the best results in terms of system availability as a function of time.

Exact and Approximate Analysis of Multi-Echelon, Multi-Indenture Spare Parts Systems with Commonality

“…In [17] they studied the so-called resupply problem that concentrates on repairable items that are disposed of and hence have to be procured again. Often organizations such as the Netherlands Navy only have a limited annual resupply budget available for these procurements; if during the year one foresees a shortage the question arises which items still should be purchased and which not.…”

“…An overview of METRIC type models is given in Sherbrooke [23]; see also Guide Jr. and Srivastava [12J. In Rustenburg [16J further generalizations and a unifying framework for the approximate analysis of general multi-echelon, multi-indenture spare parts systems with commonality and condemnation have been presented (see also Rustenburg et al [18] [17] studied so-called resupply problems, in which an annual budget is available each year to replace condemned repairable and consumable parts. In case of low budgets the question then arises how to spend the remaining budget optimally.…”

Spare parts quantity problem under uncertainty - the case of entirely new devices with short life cycle

“…Extended SPQ models are variations of the classical SPQ model, involving additional losses due to the broken device, the purchase of parts at different moments, etc. (Bartakke, 1981; (1) 2(3) Bian et al, 2013;Fera et al, 2010;Fortuin, 1981;Gu and Li, 2015;Papathanassiu and Tsouros, 1986;Pastore et al, 2015;Petrovic et al, 1986;Rodriguez et al, 2013;Rustenburg et al, 2000;Schuh et al, 2015;Sheikh et al, 2000;Verrijdt et al, 1998).…”

An Empirical Study of Service Differentiation for Weapon System Service Parts

“…This seminal work generated a whole new research area in multi-echelon inventory control as illustrated by the works of Simon (1971), Deuermeyer and Schwarz (1981), Graves (1985), Cohen et al (1986Cohen et al ( , 1989, Lee (1987), Cohen, Kleindorfer and Lee (1988) and Wang, Cohen and Zheng (1999, 2000. A recent paper by Rustenburg et al (2000) analyzes spares parts management for technical systems under budget constraints, similar to the environment studied here. The benefits of using these techniques are enormous, as illustrated by Muckstatdt and Thomas (1980) and .…”