The Reverse Supply Chain In Maintenance Actions: A Case Study Of Using Spares By Comparison Between New Parts And Repaired Parts

Now, the reverse supply chain is an important issue and this approach is widely studied, whilst the recycle policy is the main theme of this approach in order to reduce waste materials from manufacturing processes. In term of maintenance approach, the concept of reverse supply chain can be applied to this approach by using the policy of repairing the broken parts which are taken out from machine and renovated them as new parts. These will be reused again by taking them as new spares for future replacement. According to this study, the renovated parts are rather to be the mechanical parts than electrical parts or electronics devices. By applying life cycle cost analysis, the overall cost of new parts purchasing policy will be compared against overall cost of recycle policy, the lowest cost will be selected. Although, the recycle policy can reduce waste materials but the results from this study can probably be concluded that recycle policy may not be better than new parts purchasing policy in some situations. Especially, when there is unplanned downtime from machine stoppage, this will increase the production lost cost (or opportunity cost) when the renovated parts are reused. Then the right policy must be considered in order to concern about the minimum overall cost under several situations. Thus, this study can be beneficially used for sustaining to all manufacturers for selecting the right policies.