Numerical Analysis of A Spare Parts Supply Chain With Additive Manufacturing

Abstract

With recent successes, the use of additive manufacturing (AM) has shown to be a viable alternative for the production of high quality spare parts in remote military or humanitarian missions. However, effective methods for finding inventory policies in such multi-echelon networks with dual sourcing have so far been missing. In a numerical analysis, we confirm that the use of AM in downstream echelons leads to significant cost reduction, as well as reducing inventory levels. A key insight we obtain is that AM reduces the dependency of upstream stock outs, opening the door for efficient heuristics to optimize base stock levels, like the method presented.