Optimal design of a multi‐item, multi‐location, multi‐repair type repair and supply system

Evan L. Porteus and Zachary F. Lansdowne

Naval Research Logistics Quarterly, 1974, vol. 21, issue 2, 213-237

Abstract: The design of a system with many locations, each with many items which may fail while in use, is considered. When items fail, they require repair; the particular type of repair being governed by a probability distribution. As repairs may be lengthy, spares are kept on hand to replace failed items. System ineffectiveness is measured by expected weighted shortages over all items and locations, in steady state. This can be reduced by either having more spares or shorter expected repair times. Design consists of a provisioning of the number of spares for each item, by location; and specifying the expected repair times for each type of repair, by item and location. The optimal design minimizes expected shortages within a budget constraint, which covers both (i) procurement of spares and (ii) procurement of equipment and manning levels for the repair facilities. All costs are assumed to be separable so that a Lagrangian approach is fruitful, yielding an implementable algorithm with outputs useful for sensitivity analysis. A numerical example is presented.

Date: 1974
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/nav.3800210202

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:navlog:v:21:y:1974:i:2:p:213-237

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Naval Research Logistics Quarterly from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().