Technical Note—Cannibalization Policies for Multistate Systems

When spare parts are not available from conventional sources, cannibalization is often the only source of replacement. The interchange-ability of components, however, is restricted by part-type restrictions and by the cannibalization policy that is being followed. We investigate and compare the performance of six cannibalization policies, from no cannibalization to unrestricted cannibalization. Each policy is applied via computer simulation to fourteen distinctly defined machine configurations in which we manipulate the variable of the number of part-types.