Maintenance

The importance of maintenance in the producing industry keeps increasing. Maintenance costs in the old EU countries have doubled every decade; according to estimations, they amount to about 9,000 billion Euros per year. Long considered a sleeping beauty, many companies have recognized the importance of a holistic management of availability. However, the potentials and field of action in sustainable maintenance are widely unknown. The VDMA, the Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (Dortmund) and the Laboratory for Machine Tools and Production Engineering (WZL) of the RWTH Aachen University of Technology have conducted a study to investigate the status and the potentials of maintenance in German companies. The study has been supported by the German Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF). Problems and solutions as well as their implementation potential have been analyzed in the field of technology, strategy, organization, and business models. The study confirms that ...

Technology driven industries are facing new challenges to manage the spare part business of high-quality products due to decreasing innovation cycles and increasing product complexity. An influencing factor for the total profitability is the after-sales strategy for spare parts after the end-of-production decision of a product. On the one hand the guaranteed service level can be achieved by excess stocks and expensive scrapping actions. On the other hand if out of stock situations may occur, penalties and an eventual image loss have to be taken into account. Both strategies can be combined to reduce costs significantly by using a dynamic life cycle simulation approach.

Today increasing amounts of electronic components can be found in various products. Although these components have short innovation cycles they are used in primary products with comparatively long life cycles. The manufacturer of the primary product needs to supply spare parts both during production and after the end thereof. To date the planning of post end of production spare parts supply has posed a complex problem.