A study of pooling of repairable parts inventory between operators

Citation

Lopez-Gracia, N., Lordan, O., Sallan, J. M. (2014). A study of pooling of repairable parts inventory between operators. 2014 ATRS World Conference. KEDGE Business School. Bordeaux, France.

Abstract

PURPOSE
The purpose of providing availability inventory service is to maximize aircraft utilization by keeping spare units ready to be installed whenever and wherever needed. Since the size of the fleet supported by the spare repairable components inventory is the most important driver, we model the closed-loop inventory system in which component failures are Poisson distributed and the repair times at the service facility are exponential.

METHODOLOGY
 The method is based on Palm’s theorem for recommending a repairable operative inventory for a fleet and the model estimates parts demand during a certain period. In this research, we develop an inventory model for a repairable parts system which is shared by different operators in order to quantify the advantages of managing a “pool” inventory instead of private inventories for each customer.

ANTICIPATED RESULTS
Analysis of key parameters suggests that to improve the availability of the system with repairable spare parts, the supplier should improve the components repair facility, rather than the base stock level.

KEYWORDS
Inventory pooling, Component reliability, Repair facility, Poisson distribution