Spare-part management in a heterogeneous environment

Spare-part management has a significant effect on the productivity of mining equipment. The required number of spare parts can be estimated using failure and repair data collected under the name of reliability data. In the mining industry, failure and repair times are decided by the operational environment, rock properties, and the technical and functional behavior of the system. These conditions are heterogeneous and may change significantly from time to time. Such heterogeneity can change equipment’s reliability performance and, consequently, the required number of spare parts. Hence, it is necessary for effective spare-part planning to check the heterogeneity among the reliability data. After that, if needed, such heterogeneity should be modeled using an adequate statistical model. Heterogeneity can be categorized into observed and unobserved caused by risk factors. Most spare-part estimation studies ignore the effect of heterogeneity, which can lead to unrealistic estimations. In this study, we introduce the application of a frailty model for modeling the effect of observed and unobserved risk factors on the required number of spare parts for mining equipment. Studies indicate that ignoring the effect of unobservable risk factors can cause a significant bias in estimation.