Optimal Maintenance Service Strategy of Service-Oriented Aviation Manufacturers for Two-Stage Leased System Under Capacity Limits

Nowadays, the rise of operating leases has promoted the popularity of two-stage leasing in the aviation industry. That is, after the first lease expires, the aircraft will be subleased after system reconditioning. Due to the differentiated system reliability and customer requirements at two leasing stages, this leasing mode has posed new challenges to the two-stage maintenance service design. Especially, for service-oriented aviation manufacturers, the competition with independent maintenance providers (IMPs), the influence of component sales, and the maintenance capacity shortage have aggravated this difficulty. To address these challenges, this article proposes a novel approach for manufacturers to determine the optimal maintenance service strategy for two-stage leased systems under capacity constraints. Particularly, the reconditioning action after the first lease and the capacity investment are introduced into the collaborative strategy. To ensure both cost efficiency and competitiveness of the proposed strategy, a maintenance service competition mechanism is established considering two-stage differentiated customer utilities. Then, the time-varying maintenance demand accumulated from the two stages is dynamically predicted. Further, aiming at maximizing the profit from both maintenance services and component selling, two patterns addressing capacity shortage: independent investment and cooperation with an IMP are modeled. Finally, case studies validate the effectiveness of the proposed models and provide important managerial insights into pattern selection.