A Continuous-Time Examination of End-of-Life Parts Acquisition With Limited Customer Information

摘要

Manufacturers often encounter difficulties in supplying an adequate number of spare parts for a product that is in its post-production phase. Current solution methods for optimal spare part order amounts use assumptions that require knowledge of the number of products in operation at any time t In the business situation presented here, the manufacturer only has knowledge of the part and product failure rates and a probability distribution on the number of products still in operation; unless the manufacturer and customer have a close working relationship, it is likely that this information is all that the manufacturer will have available in a typical business environment. We model time-discounted revenues and costs as a function of the spare parts order amount. We consider two different versions of the problem-incremental replenishment and no replenishment-that operate by determining the rate of change of the total profit with respect to the order amount q.