Maintenance organisations and operators seek adequate spares inventory levels without overspending. Determining adequate spare inventory levels is a challenge, especially for rotables, for future demand and under budget constraints.

NLR supports one of its customers with the optimisation of its rotables spares inventory. To do so, NLR and the customer first establish current removal and repair metrics.

Together, we set an inventory confidence level, specifying the probability that a part is available when needed. We can also take the future fleet usage and budget constraints into consideration.

With these indicators, we are able to determine the number of spares required meet the inventory confidence level.

And with the knowledge of the population of the parts and their historic removals, we can predict the future spares required to meet the inventory confidence levels.

If spares acquisitions exceed the budget, we can optimise the inventory to achieve the best possible confidence level.

Future developments include exception management, to adapt spares levels for out-of-area operations, obsolescence management, modification programs, and so on.

Together with our analytical tools, we also provide organisational advice, providing guidelines to manage spares inventories, through standard or tailored solutions depending on customer needs.