Spare parts inventory management using quantitative and qualitative classification

This paper focuses on the spare parts inventory management of a maintenance provider of the health sector, where the commitment to ensure the agreed customer service level and the guarantee of maximum availability of the devices are relevant issues. Spare parts inventory management requires working with erratic and uncertain demand. As in the most cases, there is a high sporadic pattern in the demand characterized by low demand average rates, it is quite difficult to ensure that the right spare part is at the right place, at the right time and at the right quantity. This study determines an adequate inventory management policy for spare parts, specifically for unplanned maintenance operations taken into account the agreed customer service level. Considering that the criticality of a spare part has consequences regarding the availability of an equipment and service level agreement, the spare parts were classified in terms of quantity, value of usage and criticality. Based on this classification, differentiated service levels and inventory management policies were adopted for each group.