Analytical tools for robust strategic and tactical planning in maintenance logistics networks

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Maintenance and repairing services including the aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) industry is a growing sector in Canada that has been contributing to the economy by creating jobs and revenue over the past few years. High system availability is essential for advanced capital goods such as aircraft, mainframe computers, and medical devices. Due to the high variety and price of spare parts, customers of such equipment are more and more reducing their in-house maintenance investment and prefer to outsource major parts of system upkeep to an external service provider. The Maintenance Logistics Network (MLN) is a multi-echelon supply chain composing of spare part suppliers, maintenance service providers, and equipment users. Such supply chains, in the context of complex equipment, differ from manufacturing value chains due to the large number and diversity of spare parts, extremely sporadic part failure rates, uncertain repair times, high prices of individual parts, and financially remarkable effect of spare part shortage. Increasing worldwide competition and shrinking profit margins are forcing this capital-intensive sector to find novel decision tools in order to improve the service quality and lead-time.