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International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems

ICORES 2018: Operations Research and Enterprise Systems pp 102–118Cite as

An Efficient Heuristic for Pooled Repair Shop Designs

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Part of the book series: Communications in Computer and Information Science ((CCIS,volume 966))

Abstract

An effective spare part supply system planning is essential to achieve a high capital asset availability. We investigate the design problem of a repair shop in a single echelon repairable multi-item spare parts supply system. The repair shop usually consists of several servers with different skill sets. Once a failure occurs in the system, the failed part is queued to be served by a suitable server that has the required skill. We model the repair shop as a collection of independent sub-systems, where each sub-system is responsible for repairing certain types of failed parts. The procedure of partitioning a repair shop into sub-systems is known as pooling, and the repair shop formed by the union of independent sub-systems is called a pooled repair shop. Identifying the best partition is a challenging combinatorial optimization problem. In this direction, we formulate the problem as a stochastic nonlinear integer programming model and propose a sequential solution heuristic to find the best-pooled design by considering inventory allocation and capacity level designation of the repair shop. We conduct numerical experiments to quantify the value of the pooled repair shop designs. Our analysis shows that pooled designs can yield cost reductions by 25% to 45% compared to full flexible and dedicated designs. The proposed heuristic also achieves a lower average total system cost than that generated by a Genetic Algorithm (GA)-based solution algorithm.

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Acknowledgement

This research was made possible by the NPRP award [NPRP 7-308-2-128] from the Qatar National Research Fund (a member of The Qatar Foundation). The statements made herein are solely the responsibility of the author[s].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Capability Systems Centre, School of Engineering and Information Technology, University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia

    Hasan Hüseyin Turan

  2. Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, College of Engineering, Qatar University, Doha, Qatar

    Shaligram Pokharel, Tarek Y. ElMekkawy & Maryam Al-Khatib

  3. Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE

    Andrei Sleptchenko

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  1. Hasan Hüseyin Turan
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  2. Shaligram Pokharel
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  3. Tarek Y. ElMekkawy
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  4. Andrei Sleptchenko
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  5. Maryam Al-Khatib
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Correspondence to Shaligram Pokharel .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. INFORMS, Catonsville, MD, USA

    Greg H. Parlier

  2. UC3M-BS Institute of Financial Big Data, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Madrid, Spain

    Federico Liberatore

  3. Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, VIC, Australia

    Marc Demange

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Turan, H.H., Pokharel, S., ElMekkawy, T.Y., Sleptchenko, A., Al-Khatib, M. (2019). An Efficient Heuristic for Pooled Repair Shop Designs. In: Parlier, G., Liberatore, F., Demange, M. (eds) Operations Research and Enterprise Systems. ICORES 2018. Communications in Computer and Information Science, vol 966. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16035-7_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-16035-7_6

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