The Repair Kit Problem with positive replenishment lead times and fixed ordering costs

Prak, Dennis, Saccani, Nicola, Syntetos, Argyrios ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4639-0756, Teunter, Ruud and Visintin, Filippo 2017. The Repair Kit Problem with positive replenishment lead times and fixed ordering costs. European Journal of Operational Research 261 (3) , pp. 893-902. 10.1016/j.ejor.2017.02.019

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Abstract

The Repair Kit Problem (RKP) concerns the determination of a set of items taken by a service engineer to perform on-site product support. Such a set is called a kit. Models developed in the literature have always ignored the lead times associated with delivering items to replenish the kit, thereby limiting the practical relevance of the proposed solutions. Motivated by a real life case, we develop a model with positive lead times to control the replenishment quantities of the items in the kit, and study the performance of (s, S) policies under a service objective. The choice for (s, S) policies is made in order to accommodate fixed ordering costs. We present a method to calculate job fill rates with exact expressions, and discuss a heuristic approach to optimize the reorder level and order-up-to level for each item in the kit. The empirical utility of the model is assessed on real world data from an equipment manufacturer and useful insights are offered to after-sales managers.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Business (Including Economics)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HF Commerce
Uncontrolled Keywords:	OR in service industries; Inventory; Repair kit problem; Lead times; Service parts
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0377-2217
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	27 February 2017
Date of Acceptance:	14 February 2017
Last Modified:	14 Nov 2023 15:16
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/98564

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