Method of Spare Parts Inventory Management Based on Reliability

There exists a kind of inventory system which stores spare parts for the system composed of some sub-systems. Apparently, the reliability of each sub-system is relation with the reserves of spare part. How to determine the reserves is an important economic issue. Generally, two special conditions are considered. One is to find an inventory policy that can ensure the whole system to operate for the longest time under the fixed cost; another is to find an inventory policy that can ensure the cost to be lowest under the given operating time. This paper presents the models to two situations mentioned above, and gives the optimal algorithms. Numeric example shows that the models are feasible for the special system composed of some sub-systems.