It is well-known that the maintenance of an efficient supply chain of vessel spare-parts is vital to the operational activities carried out by a shipping company [1]. The demand for ship spares can arise at any time and can typically be erratic in nature[2]. Since the accuracy of demand forecasts for vessel spares is questionable, inventories must exist to mitigate the irregularities which occur in the supply chain due to differences between capacity and demand, quality issues, and lead time constraints. This is the major contributing factor to a Facility Location Decision (FLD) in Ship Maintenance Supply Chain (SMSC); mainly to proceed in a systematic manner. Inability to provide a required spare part at the right time increases the idle time of the ship resulting in a considerable loss of revenue [3]. Thus, the importance of locating a Distribution Centre (DC) in a suitable locality for the smooth provision of supplies, enabling suppliers to minimise the logistics cost incurred in the outbound supply chain, draws the immense attention of the stakeholders involved in the process. This concept was applied to the local shipping industry during the study, which was carried out in the perspective of the shipping agents concerning the ‘in-transit’ operation of vessel spare parts delivery in Sri Lanka. Even though the concept of facility location applicable to many industries and has been widely studied by researchers for many years, the shipping industry remains unfocused. Hence this study aims to develop a model considering the factors specifically related to the Ship Maintenance Supply Chain enabling its direct usage for industrial practices.

Sirisena, O., & Samarasekera, N.A. (2018). Impact of different factors affecting a facility location decision in ship supply services industry [Extended Abstract]. In T.L. Gunaruwan (Ed.), Proceedings of 3rd International Conference on Research for Transport and Logistics Industry 2018 (pp. 39-43). Sri Lanka Society of Transport and Logistics.