TY - JOUR
T1 - Using repair priorities to reduce stock investment in spare part networks
AU - Sleptchenko, A.V.
AU - Heijden, van der, M.C.
AU - Harten, van, A.
PY - 2005
Y1 - 2005
N2 - In this paper, we examine the impact of repair priorities in spare part networks. Several heuristics for assigning priorities to items as well as optimising stock levels are developed, extending the well-known VARI-METRIC method. We model repair shops by multi-class, multi-server priority queues. A proper priority setting may lead to a significant reduction in the inventory investment required to attain a target system availability (usually 10–20%). The saving opportunities are particularly high if the utilisation of the repair shops is high and if the item types sharing the same repair shop have clearly different characteristics (price, repair time). For example, we find an investment reduction of 73% for a system with single server repair shops with an utilisation of 0.90 that handle five different item types.
AB - In this paper, we examine the impact of repair priorities in spare part networks. Several heuristics for assigning priorities to items as well as optimising stock levels are developed, extending the well-known VARI-METRIC method. We model repair shops by multi-class, multi-server priority queues. A proper priority setting may lead to a significant reduction in the inventory investment required to attain a target system availability (usually 10–20%). The saving opportunities are particularly high if the utilisation of the repair shops is high and if the item types sharing the same repair shop have clearly different characteristics (price, repair time). For example, we find an investment reduction of 73% for a system with single server repair shops with an utilisation of 0.90 that handle five different item types.
U2 - 10.1016/j.ejor.2004.02.002
DO - 10.1016/j.ejor.2004.02.002
M3 - Article
SN - 0377-2217
VL - 163
SP - 733
EP - 750
JO - European Journal of Operational Research
JF - European Journal of Operational Research
IS - 3
ER -