Installed base information utilisation in industrial service development and operations

This paper describes a systematic literature review conducted to determine how installed base information (IBI) is utilised in developing and operating industrial services. We found that the reviewed literature considers IBI useful and relevant for industrial service operations, and that it is mainly used to improve service quality and efficiency. However, it is evident that there is a shortage of empirical studies and further investigations that show concrete applications of IBI in different service activities. The existing research concentrates on particular contexts, such as preventive maintenance and asset management. The asset owner perspective is emphasised in the literature, but the use of IBI for service offerings, service contracts and service sales is rarely discussed. The literature indicates that many companies lack a holistic approach to IBI management, in general, and utilisation as a part of it. It is not uncommon for companies to build large databases, but fail to do accurate analyses based on the collected data.Peer reviewe

Advancing Cost-Effective Readiness by Improving the Supply Chain Management of Sparse, Intermittently-Demanded Parts

Many firms generate revenue by successfully operating machines such as welding robots, rental cars, aircraft, hotel rooms, amusement park attractions, etc. It is critical that these revenue-generating machines be operational according to the firm s target or requirement; thus, assuring sustained revenue generation for the firm. Machines can and do fail, and in many cases, restoring the downed machine requires spare part(s), which are typically managed by the supply chain. The scope of this research is on the supply chain management of the very sparse, intermittently-demanded spare parts. These parts are especially difficult to manage because they have little to no lead time demand; thus, modeling via a Poisson process is not viable. The first area of our research develops two new frameworks to improve the supply chain manager s stock policy on these parts. The stock polices are tested via case studies on the A-10C attack aircraft and B1 bomber fleets. Results show the AF could save $10M/year on the A10 and improve support to the B1 without increasing inventory. The second area of our research develops a framework to integrate the supply chain processes that generate these service parts. With the integrated framework, we establish two new forward-looking metrics. We show examples how these forward-looking metrics can advance the supply chain manager s desire to know what proactive decisions to make to improve his/her supply chain for the good of the firm

Strategic Change towards Future Industrial Service Business

FIMECC’s Future Industrial Services program (FutIS) was set up to promote the adoption and expansion of service business in industrial firms. FutIS program has pursued new competence and better profitability for participating industrial firms’ service business, and even the transformation of the metals and engineering industry more broadly.This book is a compilation of articles based on studies carried out within the FutIS program. Each article reports conceptual or empirical research results in a domain that has been considered as relevant among the metal and engineering industry companies either considering or undergoing service business transformation. Various aspects of the processes, practices and cultural ramifications of the strategic change towards service business are covered, through experiences gathered in some of the 20 Finnish industrial firms involved in the FutIS program

Strategic inventory placement in multi-echelon supply chains : three essays

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 134-137).A central question in supply chain management is how to coordinate activities and inventories over a large number of stages and locations, while providing a high level of service to end customers. One theoretically and practically important methodology for addressing this problem is the guaranteed service (GS) framework, in which the stages of the supply chain operate according to base stock policies, and prove guaranteed service to one another. Demand is assumed to be bounded. Previous work on GS models has established very effective algorithms for finding optimal safety stock placement. In the first essay of the thesis, we show how these methods can be generalized to handle problems with capacity constraints. Furthermore, we investigate orders that are censored (reduced so as to prevent deliveries greater than what can be processed). We find safety stock reductions, sometimes even below what was needed in the no-constraint situation. In the second essay, we investigate a situation in which different parts of the supply chain are controlled by different parties, each of which selfishly applies its own GS optimization. We find that provided that the parties can agree on the right service time between them, it will be in their own interests to maintain the globally optimal solution (i.e., the system is incentive compatible). This suggests that the GS framework is better suited for coordination, than are other frameworks analyzed in the coordination literature. Finally, in the third essay, we apply the GS framework to a setting where orders are driven by forecasts and schedules, rather than by past demand as in previous GS work. We show precisely how the demand bound can be replaced by a bound on forecast errors, and that existing optimization methods can be used.(cont.) In a case study, we obtained data from the supply chain of an electronic test system, as well as characterized the forecasting process. We found that incorporating the forecast process led to 25% reduction of safety stocks.by Tor Schoenmeyr.Ph.D