Spare parts inventory is a difficult problem, including the supply chain elements of maintaining inventories of numerous spare parts. In today's global economy, spare parts are never next door, but can be across hemispheres. In addition to distance, the sheer volume of spare parts that are required to keep complex systems operational is huge -- systems like the military, transportation, and industrial businesses include an immense number of separate parts many of which are worn out through use over time. Added to these complexities are the stochastic problems associated with budget constraints and the timing of maintaining inventory levels of the consumable spare parts of an operational system.

SYSTEMS APPROACH TO BUDGET-CONSTRAINED SPARE PARTS MANAGEMENT develops a variety of multi-item models that optimize spare parts inventories so that target availability levels for specific systems and machine domains are met with minimal costs. The contributions of this systematic book treatment are as follows:

• Multi-item inventory models for the optimization of spare parts stock;

• Target availability levels for machines installed in the field are met against minimal costs for inventory holding of spare parts and for different forms of emergency shipments;

• Specific algorithms that produce optimal or close-to-optimal solutions for real-world problems;

• Case applications are provided for all of the primary types of models;

• Insights are developed for strategic decisions shipping decisions and these decisions are explored for possible critical-level policies (rationing policies) in situations with multiple classes of customers.

Geert-Jan van Houtum is Professor of Maintenance and Reliability at Eindhoven University of Technology since 2008. Prior to that, he filled positions as assistant/associate professor at the University of Twente (1994-1998) and Eindhoven University of Technology (1999-2007) and as visiting professor at Carnegie Mellon University (2001). He obtained his MSc and PhD degree in Applied Mathematics from Eindhoven University of Technology in 1990 and 1995, respectively. He does research on the maintenance and reliability of capital goods, and in particular on: (i) Design and control of service supply chains; (ii) Maintenance concepts; (iii) Design for availability. He publishes in journals such as Operations Research, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, European Journal of Operational Research, and International Journal of Production Economics. He is associate editor of Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, OR Spectrum, the Flexible Services and Manufacturing Journal, and Mathematical Methods of Operational Research. For much of his research, he collaborates with companies such as ASML, Gordian, IBM, NedTrain, Océ, Philips, Marel, and Vanderlande Industries. He is scientific director of the Beta Research School for Operations Management and Logistics.

Bram Kranenburg is Senior Consultant at Consultants in Quantitative Methods CQM in Eindhoven. He works at CQM since 2006. The projects he is involved in, concern supply chain analytics, modeling, innovation, and optimization projects. He obtained his MSc degree in Industrial Engineering and Management at the University of Twente in 2000, his MTD (Master of Technological Design) degree in Mathematics for Industry at Eindhoven University of Technology in 2003, and his PhD Degree at Eindhoven University of Technology, Department of Technology Management, in 2006. Geert-Jan van Houtum and Ton de Kok were the supervisors of the PhD project. Both the final project of Mathematics for Industry and the PhD project have been carried out in collaboration with ASML. For his PhD dissertation, Bram received the EURO Doctoral Dissertation Award 2007 of the Association of European Operational Research Societies for the best PhD dissertation defended at a European university within the Operations Research area.