Multiple Period Repair Kit Problem with Capacity Considerations

Abstract

The repair kit problem seeks an optimal stock of parts for a repair kit for purposes of remote repairs. This problem has often been studied when restocking is possible between each order, or when the number of orders is known between each restocking. This research evaluates a model for the repair kit stocking problem for which there is multiple-period demand with a known time interval between each restocking, but an unknown number of on-site repair visits is required during the restocking period. Most previous work focuses on minimum cost subject to some minimum service level; in the case where the value of technician time and customer service is relatively large, the space constraint of the kit and volume of parts comes into play. This work contributes to the literature by testing the robustness of a heuristic originally proposed by [1] in a field study. We conduct numerical experiments to evaluate the heuristic over a wide range of parameterizations. Our results indicate that the heuristic performs close to optimum, and its performance improves as the problem size grows.