The impact of transportation delays on repairshop capacity pooling and spare part inventories

In this paper, to serve different fleets of machines at different locations, we study whether repair shop pooling is more cost effective than having dedicated on-site repair shops for each fleet. When modeling the former alternative, we take transportation delays and related costs into account and represent it as a closed queueing network. This allows us to include on-site spare-part inventories that operate according to a continuous-review base-stock policy. We obtain the steady-state distribution of components at each location and the cost of the system with a pooled repair shop by applying the Mean-Value Analysis technique. Our numerical findings indicate that when transportation costs are reasonable, repair shop pooling is a better alternative.

► We study repairshop pooling for fleets of machines at different locations. ► We model this system as a closed queueing network. ► Transportation delays and costs are incorporated in our model. ► When transportation costs are reasonable, repair shop pooling is cost-effective. ► Higher down time costs and less reliable machines make repairshop pooling beneficial.