Printing Spare Parts at Remote Locations: Fulfilling the Promise of Additive Manufacturing

The Royal Netherlands Army (RNLA) is involved in over 15 missions that typically take place in remote geographic locations. Access to spare parts at these locations is intermittent because supplies are replenished according to fixed time intervals via scheduled convoys. This problem is exacerbated by limited on-site parts storage capacity. The RNLA typically has no solution for spare parts stockouts other than waiting for a part to arrive with the next replenishment. We investigate whether on-site three-dimensional (3D) printing of spare parts can bring relief.

We extend dual-sourcing literature with fixed order cycles by considering two supply sources, one of which delivers lower reliability spare parts than the other. Our model quantifies the impact of printing at remote locations, which helps the RNLA to incorporate this new technology into her operations. We model the replenishment and printing decisions as a Markov decision process. We find that the optimal policy structure is relatively simple, with a single threshold that controls when to print and when to wait for regular parts via the next replenishment.

We then apply our model to the RNLA’s peacekeeping mission in Mali. Our results indicate that on-site printing can lead to large operational cost savings through on-site inventory reductions and increased asset availability, thus increasing the ability of the RNLA to operate in remote locations. This indicates that the RNLA should ramp up its 3D printing efforts at remote locations.

Because the logistics characteristics of RNLA operations match well with those of many other remote operations, for instance in the mining and offshore industry, the positive results may apply to many more instances across different industries.