Thesis defense of Maarten Driessen, September 11, 2018


On Tuesday, September 11, 2018, Maarten Driessen will defend his PhD thesis “Integrated Capacity Planning and Inventory Control for Repairable Spare Parts”.
This thesis has been supervised by prof.dr.ir. G.J.J.A.N. van Houtum, prof.dr. W.H.M. Zijm and dr.ir. W.D. Rustenburg.
The ceremony will take place in the Senaatszaal of the Auditorium of the Eindhoven University of Technology at 16:00 hrs.

Abstract
Companies such as airlines and public transport organizations depend on the availability of high-value capital assets to provide their services. To prevent or shorten the time of costly disruptions when part failures occur, it is crucial to have the right number of spare parts available from stock in order to quickly replace the failed parts. The removed malfunctioning parts are sent to a repair shop, and after a successful repair stocked as spare parts for future use.

In this dissertation control concepts are presented that integrate decisions related to capacity planning at repair shops and inventory control for repairable spare parts, and aim at a high asset availability at affordable costs of both spare part inventories and repair shops. Case studies at six companies have been used to extensively describe real-life practices, and to identify key aspects that should be taken into account when designing such control concepts. Different control concepts are presented for the various repair shop types encountered in practice, and focus groups and a mathematical model are used to validate these concepts in detail.