Initial spare parts assortment decision making for rolling stock maintenance: a structured approach

Design for maintenance and maintenance operations become increasingly important in recent years. In the capital-intensive industry, maintenance expenditures can add up to several times the initial investment. In order to be competitive in their business, owners and users of these capital goods have to take into account the total life cycle cost at investment (the lifespan of a train is about 30 years), the renewal decisions for their installations and the logistic management of the spare parts. Erroneous or unstructured initial spare parts assortment decision-making part of the logistic management can lead to undesired downtime and increases the risk of obsolete or unavailable components. Decision making is further complicated by non- existent data in the early design phase and several information management problems. Based on a case study at NedTrain (the largest maintainer of rolling stock in the Netherlands) and literature review a Decision Support Model to structure and to improve the initial spare part assortment for the rolling stock maintenance is proposed.