Spare parts management: a comparison between (s,s) policy with delayed ordering and policy based on binomial distribution and total cost

Spare parts management is a critical issue for the companies due to the typical characteristics of this kind of items, high unit value, high level of technology, non-regular demand and specialized uses. Generally, this problem is faced with two different strategies: more accuracy in demand forecasting models and improving the spare parts inventory management. This proposed research deals with this latter aspect and it compares two different inventory management policies, previous presented in literature. The studied policies are the (s,S) one with delayed ordering, introduced by Teunter et al (2012) and policy based on binomial distribution and total cost function, developed by Persona et al (2006). Their applications to several scenarios are deeply analyzed, varying the main variables, like costs, lifetime parameters, number of requirements and others. Finally, several considerations about the analyzed policies are reported and further researches are discussed.