Business and Inventory Challenges

Achieving high service levels (fill rates) in aftermarket parts businesses is both important and challenging. It's important because the aftermarket division drives corporate profits at many businesses. Challenging because inventory planning systems are not well suited for high inventory mix, many slow movers, and complex multi-tier distribution environments. So Customer Service Management groups often become frustrated when they cannot generate the service levels that they want from their inventory planning and forecasting systems.

Aftermarket parts inventories also usually exhibit a very wide range of behaviors, from fast-moving commodity consumables to extremely slow and or even obsolete stock. Criticality also varies, with some spares requiring ready availability.

Finally, lead times and lot sizes can also be a problem. Low volume parts may only available with long lead times. And lot size quantities are often much larger than the immediate rate of consumption justifies.

ToolsGroup's Unique Capabilities

ToolsGroup inventory solutions are ideally suited for this sort of environment. ToolsGroup's frequency-based demand modeling provides an exceptional ability to model slow moving inventory. It provides the ability to deliver stable, reliable and very high service levels. In addition, ToolsGroup delivers improved short-term forecast accuracy, which is critical to achieving high fill rates. Despite the challenges in this industry, ToolsGroup customers are routinely obtaining service levels in the high 90s.

ToolsGroup solutions also address many of the specific needs of aftermarket parts companies such as handling:

• Lot size optimization
• Vendor Management Inventory (VMI)
• Complex multi-echelon network models
• Capacity to provide fair allocation in multi-level inventory

Successes

ToolsGroup is successfully deployed at more than 30 customers in their aftermarket parts business, such as:

• Ferrari/ Maserati
• Delphi
• Piaggio (Vespa)
• Aston Martin
• Augusta Aerospace
• And many others

For a complete list of customers and our unique capabilities for the aftermarket parts industry, please contact the ToolsGroup office nearest you.