Service Exchange Systems — The Stock Control of Repairable Items

Abstract

In addition to stocks of spare parts for its machinery, an organization will often find it advantageous to hold stocks of repairable sub-assemblies. These can be used to shorten the repair and overhaul times of expensive machines. This paper describes extensions of standard stock control theory to the case of repairable items and also discusses some of the difficulties which can arise with service exchange systems in practice.