Simulation of dynamics behaviors for shipping equipment support with system dynamics analysis approach

Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management JIEM, 2015 – 8(3): 636-657 – Online ISSN: 2013-0953 – Print ISSN: 2013-8423 http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.1345 Simulation of Dynamics Behaviors for Shipping Equipment Support with System Dynamics Analysis Approach Yang Song, Jian-hua Yang Beijing University of Science&Technology (China) , Received: December 2014 Accepted: April 2015 Abstract: Purpose: This paper mainly focuses on the exactly and precisely supply of carrying spare parts problem which has a crucial impact on supporting work and improving the performance of equipment. Spare parts support has been the crux work that will be limited by allocation of spare parts and input support cost. Reasonable support strategy may subserve the high efficiency of available resources allocation and supporting the equipment in normal operational status. The purpose of this paper is to propose a dynamics model of spare parts support process based on considering the interaction of multiple factors, and explore the regulation of dynamics behavior in the system. Further, findings indicate that it is more helpful to achieve the optimization strategy than to cut inventory, results of the former suggest that improve on the effect of support so that will enhance the relevant support parameters of equipment. Design/methodology/approach: Consider the feedback relationship among some important factors of support that involves support cost, support time and maintenance ability. System dynamics theory is adopted to propose a dynamics model of spare parts support process, on the analysis of multiple factors and casual relationship to find some major ones which have crucial impact on spare parts support. Spare parts support cost and availability was regarded as the control objective, moreover, adjust the control paramours and improve the effect of cannibalization and lateral supply scheduling strategy for spares support. -636- Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management – http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.1345 Findings: The factors of spare parts supply, demand and maintenance have relationship of control feedback, and adjust the value of some crucial factors can reduce the support cost and improve the availability value. The main finding is that adopting cannibalization strategy under condition of available materials can relieve the mission and operational availability decline caused by shortage of spare parts. Combining the lateral supply and cannibalization strategy can reduce the inventory of warship carrying spare parts. Practical implications: By controlling the value of key factors regarding aspect of spare parts supply, logistics and maintenance planning. Decision makers can have a visualization guideline to make the adjustment of support strategy, and can achieve better management of equipment and spare parts. Originality/value: This paper proposes a dynamics model and focuses on exploring the dynamics behavior of the support system that could help in improving the ability of warship equipment to make supply support strategy easily. It can provide visualization guideline for decision maker in the enterprise. Keywords: system dynamics, availability, lateral transshipment policy, cannibalization 1. Introduction Spare parts are the magnitude material base that can sustain the normal operating state for the equipment support. The all-in support cost comprise a large proportion of the whole life cycle of warship equipment, which can avoid the shortage of funds and spare parts, consequently, it is of great importance to make rational allocation of spare parts for accurately and timely equipment support work. During the mission time at sea, warship equipment usually faces a problem that is hard to get materials supplies, when warship equipment is in the malfunction condition or getting normal maintenance. The performance needs to restore through the voyage repair, and the materials are required by maintenance which could be provided by the warship carrying spare parts. Shortage of spare parts will influence maintenance work, moreover, that will reduce the level of equipment availability; If the warships carried a large number of spare parts to ensure the equipment that can run in a good condition, whether the quantity of spares needs overabundance is a highly debatable problem, however, the overabundance of spares will occupy a large amount of money of enterprise and cause waste of warship storage space. How to meditate that under multiple constraints such as the support cost, warship space, warship repair ability and so on. It is no exaggeration to say that reasonably allocation of spare parts to get the biggest warship support capability has become hot issues for the research of equipment support. -637- Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management – http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.1345 In the application field of spare parts management theory which has attracted many experts and scholars at home and abroad, METRIC model (Sherbrooke, 1968) is the classical model in the field of repairable spare parts supply security, provides a theoretical basis for the spare parts to ensure optimal allocation. Because the model has some defects in scope of application and calculation precision, and then the other researchers proposed the improved model, such as MOD – METRIC model (Muckstadt, 1973), VARI – METRIC model (Hillestad, 1982), DYNA – METRIC model (Sherbrooke, 1986). The VARI - METRIC model improved the original METRIC model in the multi-level security for the problem of spare parts shortage quantity estimation. Aircraft spare parts and warship spare parts are usually limited by time, space and some other aspects of constraints, for the problem of aviation equipment procurement decisions on spare parts inventory levels (Yoon & Sohn, 2007), he developed a two stage model and combined the time-varying characteristics of procurement of spare parts to solve the problem. In order to solve the huge losses due to high cost of spare parts shortage, the allocation model (Costantino, Gravio & Tronci, 2013) was proposed based on the optimal type of spare parts inventory management thoughts, considering the maintenance center repair ability combined with the system availability, and multi-level, variety of spare parts, multistage multiple constraints of spare parts. Regattieria, Gamberia, Gamberinib and Manzinia (2005) proposed an effective prediction method to solve predicting problem of fluctuating demand for aviation spares, which proved the independence of the spare parts demand fluctuations, both the test data and historical data were used in the algorithm analysis and results comparison. Lee, Chew, Teng and Chen (2008) proposed the simulation optimization method that was used to solve the problem of aviation spare parts distribution, developed a multi-objective evolutionary algorithm, which is concluded by many factors such as cost, spare parts satisfactory rate under the const (...truncated)