Critical Spare Parts Management in Maritime Shipping: Selection and Control

Maritime cargo is essential for the worlds economy with thousands of ships transporting it year round over the sea (United Nations, 2020). Through rough seas and weather conditions, maintaining ships operational and safe for the crew and cargo is vital. The maritime industry is challenged by planning and executing maintenance jobs including the allocation of critical spare parts in a cost-sensitive manner. Spare parts are generally defined as interchangeable parts that are kept in inventory and used as a material source of maintenance activities. In fact, the selection of those parts to carry on board and those to allocate where it is most beneficial to assure continuous ship operations is paramount. In this paper, we use an ABC/XYZ analysis for categorizing critical spare parts for vessels and entire fleets. We further aim to evaluate strategies for controlling them. Our analysis is based on data of a representative case in maritime bulk shipping aiming at identifying spare parts to be allocated such that they are available at the right time in the right place to lowest costs. This is a difficult task as bulk shipping is comparable to taxi driving where port calls cannot be foreseen much time in advance.