Model Development for Auto Spare Parts Inventory Control and Management

Abstract

The immense dynamics and criticality of spare parts and the large revenues accrued, as essential motivating factors for providing control in manufacturing companies has never showed any sign of decrease. In fact, in the vast technological environment of today the complexities of Spare Parts Inventory Control enjoys more insights from analysts (in the Management Science, Information Technology and Industrial/Mechanical Engineering fields) as inventory policies get modeled to ensure customer satisfaction. In other words manual ways of handling inventory has failed to cope with factors like stochastic demands, better service levels, and shorter lead times and providing perfect heuristics for Inventory-related decision making. To this end, significant results for forecasting spare parts requirements can be achieved through the use of novel decision models. Besides the selling of vehicles, the spare parts of various models of heavy duty vehicles are stored and managed by the company. The management of these models which is complex was further complicated by the vast number of parts required in each model. In fact, more than 20,000 active parts needed to be controlled. The management of these parts can only be done with the aid of a computer; hence the spare parts complex has a computerized spare parts inventory database. Each of the parts that is supplied or replenished is continuously keyed into the computer and the inventory stock parameters are updated automatically. The company uses a software package for its inventory control. This is used to identify the part number of the spare parts. From the part number, the location of the spare parts in the stock room is identified.

Key Words: Spare parts inventory, Information Technology