The Influence of Repair Quality on Aircraft Spare Part Demand Variability

Abstract

Accurate estimation of spare part demand is challenging in the case of intermittent or lumpy demand, characterised by infrequent demand occurrence and variability in demand size. While prior research has considered the effect of exogenous variables on spare part demand, there is a lack of research considering the effects of repair quality and aggregated spare part demand behaviour across fleets of assets under the influence of multiple simultaneously acting drivers of failure. This research provides new insights towards the problem of estimating variable spare part demand through modelling and simulation of the effects of multiple, simultaneously considered spare part demand drivers. In particular, a contribution to the state of the art is introduced by the use of a Branching Poisson Process (BPP) to model repair quality effects for spare part demand generation in conjunction with several demand drivers. The approach is applied in a numerical study which involves component failure characteristics based on real-life data from an aircraft maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) provider. It is shown that repair quality improvements drive down the variance in the demand and the total number of failures over time, and outperform the effect of environmental drivers of failure in terms of demand generation.