Logistic support for the improvement of the warranty management

Abstract

Nowadays, providing a good post-purchase service has become extremely important then the efficiency of warranty management programs seems to be crucial. On these considerations, the paper deals with the problem of improving warranty management programs through logistic support planning. Starting from a reference framework for warranty management, the paper outlines the role that the logistic support can play in increasing process efficiency. In particular, different aspects are addressed, such as classification of system components, definition of repair levels and maintenance tasks. The presented framework is referred to the military industry in which logistic support strategies are widely applied. Despite this, proposed methodology can be considered universally valid and easily applicable to different contexts. Outsourcing: warranty service or in general, the after-sales department of a company, is usually one of the most susceptible to be outsourced due to its low risk and due also to the fact that, among other features, outsourcing provides legal insurance for such assistance services (Gomez et al. 2009). Quality: a reliability and quality improvement of the product has not only an advantageous and favorable impact in front of the client; it also highly reduces the expected warranty cost ( Chukova & Hayakawa 2004, Lutz & Padmanabhan 1998). Costs: in reference to cost estimation, there are nowadays methods to estimate accurately the final cost of a specific acquisition contract as, for instance, the “Estimate at Completion” (EAC) method (Christensen 1993), a management technique that can be used in a project for the control of the costs progress. Considering commercial products, many warranty cost estimation methods have been developed in recent years (Chattopadhyay & Murthy 2000, Nguyen & Murthy 2006, Samatli-Pac & Taner 2008, Chattopadhyay & Rahman 2008) Maintenance: in many cases, during the warranty period the manufacturer still has a strong control over its product and its behavior. Additionally, the expected warranty costs depend normally not only on warranty requirements, but also on the associated maintenance schedule of the product (Yeh & Lo 2001, Dimitrov et al. 2004, Kim et al. 2004, Wu & Li 2007).