Importance measure-based maintenance analysis and spare parts storage configuration in two-echelon maintenance and supply support system

Abstract

The development of society has put forward higher requirements for the supply of maintenance spare parts. However, the current support index is not comprehensive enough to evaluate the system ability. Meanwhile, the influence of horizontal supply time on spare parts storage is not fully reflected. Therefore, the problem of spare parts storage configuration in two-echelon maintenance and supply support systems is analysed in the paper. First, the state transition rates of different parts are studied under the context. Then a system-level comprehensive support rate based on importance measure is proposed. To determine the number of different spare parts, an optimisation model is established to maximise system support efficiency. Furthermore, a site importance measure based on horizontal supply time is proposed to measure the site priority over spare parts storage. Next, a two-stage decision method is presented for determining the location of spare parts. Finally, the feasibility of the proposed method is verified with the help of an example for the aircraft maintenance and supply support system.

KEYWORDS:

• Maintenance
• support rate
• importance measure
• storage configuration
• reliability

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data availability statement

The authors confirm that the data supporting the findings of this study are available within the article.

Additional information

Funding

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support for this research from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 72071182, U1904211), the ministry of education's humanities and social sciences planning fund (No. 20YJA630012), the Key Science and Technology Program of Henan Province (No. 222102520019), the Program for young backbone teachers in Universities of Henan Province (No. 2021GGJS007), the Program for Science & Technology Innovation Talents in Universities of Henan Province (No. 22HASTIT022).

Notes on contributors

Hongyan Dui

Hongyan Dui is a guest professor in Luoyang Polytechnic, and a professor in School of Management, Zhengzhou University, China. He received his PhD from Northwestern Polytechnical University. His research focused on system reliability research, complex network optimisation, logistics and supply chain management and its reliability. His proposed integrated importance measure has been adopted by the JMP software of SAS system as one of the main mathematical tools for importance analysis of system.

Xingju Yang

Xingju Yang is currently pursuing the Master degree in School of Management, Zhengzhou University, China. His research focuses on the system reliability and preventive maintenance modelling for multi-state systems.

Meng Liu

Meng Liu is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in School of Reliability and Systems Engineering, Beihang University, China. He received the B.S. degree in School of Management, Zhengzhou University, China. His research interests include system reliability modelling and importance measures.