Operational planning in service control towers – heuristics and case study

We study performance improvement in multi-echelon, closed loop spare part supply chains using operational interventions based on real-time status information. Our objective is to minimize the total cost relevant costs, consisting of intervention costs and backorder costs. In this paper, we focus proactive interventions, aiming avoid stockouts. assume that all reactive are fixed. Proactive include lateral transshipments, emergency shipments, stock reservations, expediting repairs, early new buys parts. These invoked by alert generation, when chain deviates from plan. propose heuristic rules generate alerts. also develop for choice interventions. model test our heuristics a simulation bed, data global IT company case Germany. Numerical experiments reveal following key insights: (i) downstream – shipments have most impact reducing (ii) communicating losses (no returns, failed repairs) has positive fill rates at negligible (iii) expedite repair reservations proposed not profitable.