Is India on the Brink of a Serious Economic Crisis?
Widening Current Account Deficit The first and most important problem facing the Indian economy is the widening current account deficit or the CAD. The CAD refers to the difference between the exports and the imports, which is always a deficit for countries like India that are dependent on imports of oil for their economy. However, […]
Steps Involved in Conducting a Measurement System Analysis
Measurement Systems Analysis is a complicated exercise. However, Six Sigma provides a step by step procedure to conduct it. Also, as usual, the focus of the executives should be to understand the focus of the exercise and interpretation of the results. The complex calculations can be performed by software. Here is the 4 step procedure. […]
Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity Planning Concepts
In the business world today, every customer expects Organizations to walk the talk. Being sensitive to customer expectations and to ensure that the business operations are not hampered due to any reason, organizations have begun to take the concepts of Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity plans seriously. The concept of Disaster recovery is of prime […]
Process Design and Analysis
Introduction The objective of organization is to provide service and product, which satisfy customer and create value for them. A product and service designed is based on the customer feedback and requirement of the market. Process design is where the product is broken down into parts, which further can be helpful in the actual manufacturing […]
Why Radical Disruption is not Always Beneficial: Lessons from Demonetization
Is Demonetization an Example of Radical Disruption? The Indian Economy and Body Polity was treated to a Shock Exercise when the Indian Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, decided to demonetize 80% of the total currency in circulation at a stroke of a sudden announcement and in a most unilateral and arbitrary manner. This policy announcement that […]
When you buy any Computer or Electronics Hardware or equipment, normally one of the questions asked to the sales person is “What is the Service Support” provided by the company.
Today the brand image or market demand rides not only the quality of the product but on the quality of service support too. Service support is critical in industries like Computers, Telecom, Aero spares, etc. In all cases the response time and availability of the spares become critical. In all cases corporate installations demanding onsite support coupled with critical downtime service level measurements have pushed the suppliers to set up an efficient spare parts supply chain.
Take the case of an installation of a server in a bank’s central processing division which cannot afford to be down at all. The company who installs the server is required to ensure that service engineer is available at site during normal hours and on call basis on 24 × 7 basis. It is not enough to have the engineer attending to or being available at site; the required spare parts need to be available.
Critical and high value spare parts have to be made available in a nearby warehousing location and logistical arrangements are required to be made to reach it to the site in a fastest and quickest reach time, which is a few hours in most of the cases.
The site engineer most often can perform diagnostic functions and report back to the service team. The service support team would then escalate the matters to the technical experts who get involved in solving the problem. All of the coordination and problem solving along with logistics arrangements is required to happen in a matter of hours. Such critical performance levels are documented in the service agreements and in most cases 99% up times are required to be committed by the company supplying the server.
Similar situation exists in aero spares parts supply chain too. Airplanes can develop snags in any location and not necessarily at the base where they operated from. Therefore, the logistics of having to locate the defective part, requisitioning the part besides the request being directed to the central spare parts warehouse by the 3PL service provider and managing to airlift or courier the part in the fastest mode is the normal requirement in this industry.
Most of the parts are high-value parts and cannot be stocked or warehoused in all locations as inventory. Airplanes cannot be grounded for a long time which would result in heavy losses to the airlines. The down time allotted for preventive maintenance itself is very less.
Aero spare parts supply chain has also been built around processes to ensure fastest lead times and ready availability and immediate retrieval of the right component.
In most cases the essential spare parts are kept in stock at the country level based on the number of installations or volumes of sale under each category of product. In case of non availability the parts are called for on urgent basis from a regional distribution center normally available at a regional level servicing a continent and flown down on urgent courier mode.
In all cases ensuring minimum downtime is the key factor that drives the spare parts process which involves logistics service providers, warehouses, customer service teams and technical teams working in tandem to ensure customer satisfaction.
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