A study of the optimal procurement to determine the quantities of spare parts under the budget constraint

It is very important to forecast demand and determine the optimal procurement quantities of spare parts. The Army has been forecasting demand not with actual usage of spare parts but with request quantities. However, the Army could not purchase all of forecasted demand quantities due to budget limit. Thus, the procurement quantities depend on the item managers' intuition and their meetings. The system currently used contains many problems. This study suggests a new determination procedure; 1) forecasting demand method based on actual usage, 2) determining procurement method through LP model with budge and other constraints. The newly determined quantities of spare parts is verified in the simulation model, that represents the real operational and maintenance situation to measure the operational availability. The result shows that the new forecasting method with actual usage improves the operational availability. Also, the procurement determination with LP improves the operational availability as well.