Spare parts management for technical systems: resupply of spare parts under limited budgets

In this paper, we study the operational availability of a complex technical system consisting of several components. The components are subject to bre akdowns, and hence for each component a limited number of spare parts are h eld in stock. If a system's component fails and it can not be replaced imme diately, due to a lack of spares, the system becomes unavailable until a ne w component is installed. Failed components are disposed of and hence, to k eep the spare parts stock at an appropriate level, new components have to b e purchased. We assume that only a limited annual budget is available for p rocurement, while any further procurement requires a considerable lead time . We investigate at an aggregate level what budgets are needed to attain a target availability level for the system. In addition, we develop various o perational strategies for spending the annual budget during each year. Nume rical results indicate that the so-called Balance Focussed strategy provide s the best results in terms of system availability as a function of time.