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Integrated planning of spare parts and service engineers with partial backlogging

Author

Listed:
  • S. Rahimi-Ghahroodi

    (University of Twente)

  • A. Al Hanbali

    (University of Twente)

  • W. H. M. Zijm

    (University of Twente)

  • J. K. W. Ommeren

    (University of Twente)

  • A. Sleptchenko

    (College of Engineering, Qatar University)

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the integrated planning of resources in a service maintenance logistics system in which spare parts supply and service engineers deployment are considered simultaneously. The objective is to determine close-to-optimal stock levels as well as the number of service engineers that minimize the total average costs under a maximum total average waiting time constraint. When a failure occurs, a spare part and a service engineer are requested for the repair call. In case of a stock-out at spare parts inventory, the repair call will be satisfied entirely via an emergency channel with a fast replenishment time but at a high cost. However, if the requested spare part is in stock, the backlogging policy is followed for engineers. We model the problem as a queueing network. An exact method and two approximations for the evaluation of a given policy are presented. We exploit evaluation methods in a greedy heuristic procedure to optimize this integrated planning. In a numerical study, we show that for problems with more than five types of spare parts it is preferable to use approximate evaluations as they become significantly faster than exact evaluation. Moreover, approximation errors decrease as problems get larger. Furthermore, we test how the greedy optimization heuristic performs compared to other discrete search algorithms in terms of total costs and computation times. Finally, in a rather large case study, we show that we may incur up to 27% cost savings when using the integrated planning as compared to a separated optimization.

Suggested Citation

  • S. Rahimi-Ghahroodi & A. Al Hanbali & W. H. M. Zijm & J. K. W. Ommeren & A. Sleptchenko, 2017. "Integrated planning of spare parts and service engineers with partial backlogging," OR Spectrum: Quantitative Approaches in Management, Springer;Gesellschaft für Operations Research e.V., vol. 39(3), pages 711-748, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:orspec:v:39:y:2017:i:3:d:10.1007_s00291-017-0473-3
    DOI: 10.1007/s00291-017-0473-3
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    Cited by:

    1. Rahimi-Ghahroodi, S. & Al Hanbali, A. & Zijm, W.H.M. & Timmer, J.B., 2019. "Emergency supply contracts for a service provider with limited local resources," Reliability Engineering and System Safety, Elsevier, vol. 189(C), pages 445-460.
    2. Rahimi-Ghahroodi, S. & Al Hanbali, A. & Zijm, W.H.M. & Timmer, J.B., 2020. "Multi-resource emergency supply contracts with asymmetric information in the after-sales services," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 229(C).
    3. Rahimi-Ghahroodi, S. & Al Hanbali, A. & Vliegen, I.M.H. & Cohen, M.A., 2019. "Joint optimization of spare parts inventory and service engineers staffing with full backlogging," International Journal of Production Economics, Elsevier, vol. 212(C), pages 39-50.
    4. Sleptchenko, Andrei & Al Hanbali, Ahmad & Zijm, Henk, 2018. "Joint planning of service engineers and spare parts," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 271(1), pages 97-108.

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