Exploring Management Issues in Spare Parts Forecast

Abstract

According to literature, we know that research in spare parts forecast is a very popular topic in recent years due to the need of higher service level of customer demand. Most approaches in these researches focus on how to forecast spare parts more accurately under various conditions with some mathematical techniques. However, few attentions are paid to the management issues to control or maintain some factors to keep the spare parts forecast useful. For example, Engineering Change (EC) often introduce lots of planed items no longer valid and consume mass efforts trying to continue the spare parts support. This motivates our study. This study starts from service process, spare parts requirement, and spare parts forecast flow. When we come to investigate management issues in spare parts forecast, besides EC, such as issues like different service models for OEM, ODM or Brander, spare parts information correctness and service organization structures are worth exploring.