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

包括飞机维护、修理和大修（MRO）在内的维修服务行业在加拿大是一个不断发展的行业，在过去几年中，通过创造就业机会和收入，为加拿大经济做出了贡献。高系统可用性对于先进的资本货物（如飞机、大型计算机和医疗设备）至关重要。由于零配件的品种多、价格高，这类设备的客户越来越减少自己的内部维护投资，而倾向于将系统维护的主要部件外包给外部服务提供商。维修物流网络（Maintenance Logistics Network， MLN）是一个由备件供应商、维修服务商和设备用户组成的多层次供应链。在复杂设备的背景下，这种供应链不同于制造业价值链，因为备件数量多、种类多、零件故障率极低、维修时间不确定、单个零件价格高、备件短缺的财务影响显著。日益激烈的全球竞争和不断缩小的利润率迫使这个资本密集型行业寻找新的决策工具，以提高服务质量和交货时间。

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. While spare part inventory planning for in-house maintenance systems has been extensively investigated in the literature, less research has been devoted to link inventory policies with strategic and tactical plans in MLNs in the context of external service providers. This significant gap in the literature in addition to financial issues Canadian MRO industries have been recently facing attracted our attention to investigate this problem from a supply chain viewpoint. Nevertheless, the latter raises several challenging questions in terms of coordination among independent MLN stakeholders. The overall objective of this research program is hence to propose an advanced modelling and algorithmic framework for MLN strategic and tactical planning while incorporating service part inventory control policies as well as high level of uncertainty inherent in such value chains. Designing coordination mechanisms among stakeholders of these logistics networks is another key element of this research program. Our methodology mainly relies on stochastic programming, decomposition algorithms, meta heuristics, supply chain coordination contracts, discrete-event simulation, and approximation algorithms for performance evaluation of multi-echelon inventory systems. By providing robust decision support tools, this multidisciplinary research program is expected to assist Canadian service/repair sector remain economically sustainable while maximising customer service level.