Spare Parts Inventory Control for Non-Repairable Items Based on Prognostics and Health Monitoring Information

Abstract

The application of PHM (Prognostics and Health Monitoring) techniques can provide a wide range of benefits to aircraft operators. Since the primary goal of PHM systems is to estimate the health state of components and equipments, as well as forecasting their RUL (Remaining Useful Life), they are often closely associated with the reduction in the number of unscheduled maintenance tasks. Indeed, the avoidance of unscheduled maintenance is a very important factor, but this technology may potentially lead to considerable further savings in other fields. The usage of PHM information by the logistics team for spare parts inventory control is a good example to illustrate that a PHM system can potentially provide benefits for other teams besides the maintenance team. The purpose of this work is to present a comparison between two different inventory control policies for non-repairable parts in terms of average total cost required and service level achieved. The well known [R, Q] (re-order point, economic order quantity) inventory model will be used as a reference. This model will be compared with a model based on information obtained from a PHM system. Discrete event simulation will be used in order to simulate and assess the performance of both models.