Closed Loop Airline Rotable Component Float Availability and Control: A Case Study

Abstract

The research presented in this paper tests various approaches for modeling a typical airline closed-loop rotable spare parts supply system and their usability for real-life spare parts availability prediction and control. Unlike previous work published dealing with economic models and finding optimal stock levels, we focus on actual airline workshop and analyze its throughput. The paper presents the queue model simulation with a limited population of customers, limited system capacity, and unknown queuing discipline. Simulations are conducted by generating interarrival time and system time data (due to unknown service time), taking a number of variations in the stock size and average system time. The purpose of the simulations and the experiment is to test the effect of stock size on different measures of system effectiveness. The results show how the total number of spare parts interplays with the service level and how the retention time of the spare part in the workshop affects the required number of spare parts.