REVISTA DYNA MANAGEMENT

Key words:

Asignación de inventario, transbordos laterales, gestión de repuestos, procesos de Markov, teoría de colas, Stock allocation, lateral transshipment, spare part management, Markov process, Querying theory.

Article type:

ARTICULO DE INVESTIGACION / RESEARCH ARTICLE

Section:

RESEARCH ARTICLES

This paper presents a solution to the problem of allocation and stock levels of spare parts for a firm with several maintenance bases within a single echelon and for a single item. The problem is approached from a company's point of view, whose ultimate goal is to increase the profitability of their assets by increasing the asset availability while restricted by an operational budget. In order to increase availability, lateral transshipments between the different bases and a supplier with limited capacity are used. Markov chains are implemented to model this behavior. The proposed solution consists of a combinatorial model, and to solve it, a greedy-like algorithm with a local search is used. To determine the performance of the model and the proposed solution, a computational application is performed. The results obtained indicate that, as the spares requirements rate increases, it is preferred to stock in a single base. This single base acts as a HUB, using lateral transshipment. Alongside this, it is created evidence to consider response capacity of suppliers for the design of an inventory model and not only to consider the direct costs associated with inventory holding. Finally, further developments are discussed.