An integrated approach to the design and operation for spare parts logistic systems

This paper attempts to solve a comprehensive design problem for a spare part logistic system. The design factors encompass logistic network design, part vendor selection, and transportation modes selection. Two approaches to solve the problem were proposed. In Approach 1, we simultaneously considered all the design factors and proposed two algorithms (SGA-1 and TGA-1). In Approach 2, the design problem was solved in two stages. Firstly, we aimed to find a near-optimal logistic network. Secondly, with the obtained logistic network, we proposed three algorithms (SGA-2, TGA-2, and NN-GA-Tabu) to find optimal combinations for part vendor and transportation modes selection. Numerical experiments indicate that Approach 2 outperforms Approach 1, and the NN-GA-Tabu outperforms all the other four algorithms. The proposed NN-GA-Tabu might also be a good solution architecture for solving other comprehensive space search problems.