Research on Multi-Echelon Inventory System for Civil Aircraft Spare Parts with Lateral Transshipments and Importance Degree

This paper proposes a research method for multi-echelon inventory allocation of civil aircraft spare parts with lateral transshipments and importance degree to investigate the influence of importance degree on inventory allocation of spare parts. Firstly, the procedure of multi-echelon inventory optimal allocation for civil aircraft spare parts is elaborated under considering importance degree and lateral transshipments. Secondly, the inventory optimal model with the fleet availability as the objective function, inventory system total cost and the fill rate as the constraints are constructed. Thirdly, the marginal analysis method is applied to resolve the mathematical model. Lastly, the spare parts of civil aircraft door are selected as the study object, and the inventory optimal allocation is investigated. The analysis results illustrate the optimal configuration quantity for each spare part, and the inventory system total cost and fleet availability are obtained under the condition of satisfying the constraints. Through the comparison of the results of the normal lateral transshipments model, the multi-echelon inventory allocation of civil aircraft spare parts with lateral transshipments and importance degree is validated to be feasible and effective.