Spare Parts Inventory Control under System Availability Constraints

By: Geert-Jan Houtum and Bram Kranenburg

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Synopsis: This book focuses on the tactical planning level for spare parts management. It describes a series of multi-item inventory models and presents exact and heuristic optimization methods, including greedy heuristics that work well for real, life-sized problems. The intended audience consists of graduate students, starting scholars in the field of spare parts inventory control, and spare parts planning specialists in the industry. In individual chapters the authors consider topics including: a basic single-location model; single-location models with multiple machine types and/or machine groups; the multi-location model with lateral transshipments; the classical METRIC model and its generalization to multi-indenture systems; and a single-location model with an explicit modeling of the repair capacity for failed parts and the priorities that one can set there. Various chapters of the book are used in a master course at Eindhoven University of Technology and in a PhD course of the Graduate Program Operations Management and Logistics (a Dutch network that organizes PhD courses in the field of OM&L). The required pre-knowledge consists of probability theory and basic knowledge of Markov processes and queuing theory. End-of-chapter problems appear for all chapters, with some answers appearing in an appendix.