In addition to managing interventions and controlling the spare parts supply chain, after-sales service and the maintenance of systems in proper operational order, also demand efficient industrial operations:

• parts repairs,
• repair or refurbishment of finished products or subassemblies.

The key questions regarding these industrial operations are radically different from the questions related to series production:

• parts repairs:
  • the repair procedures are only known once the initial inspection has been completed. Therefore, these operations are scheduled using dynamic procedures and by adopting a finite-capacity project management approach,
  • the scheduling processes must allow for the forward-looking quantification of resources, in a context where demand is erratic and only becomes precisely clear at the last minute,
  • the push or pull flows must be defined. They must be coherent with the management of parts variants,
  • rotables are quantified according to the length of the repair cycles. Therefore, the turn-around time must be cut, both in terms of reverse logistics and of time taken to perform repairs (Lean repairs, tension of flows, putting on line, control of bottlenecks, priorities),
  • the coexistence of new and repaired parts must be carefully controlled to prevent excess stock and unavailability,
  • the replace or repair policy must be defined according to economic criteria that demand a thorough knowledge of the structure of operational costs,
• the repair or refurbishment of finished products or subassemblies usually faces the same problems, plus a few more specific points:
  • the scheduling processes must allow for rapid responses with short turn-around times, based both on available capacity and the availability of new and repaired parts,
  • the diversity of the configurations of the installed base must be kept under control (knowledge of the installed base, need for new configurations, etc.),
  • the pool of finished products or subassemblies must be sized according to the global TAT and placed in the distribution network in order to support even the most demanding service offers (24h, AOG, etc.),
  • when part of an installed base is refurbished, the operations schedule must take the operational imperatives into consideration.

Argon Consulting can help its customers to optimize their industrial repair operations, from the diagnostic and definition of the target, to support with operational implementation.

• definition and implementation of the supply chain planning processes, of the organization and the roles and responsibilities,
• support with the implementation of IS tools (APS),
• definition of the repair policies,
• Lean repair initiatives, tension of the flows, reduction of repair or refurbishment cycles,
• management of stocks of new or repaired parts,
• improvement of reverse logistics,
• definition of the means of managing configurations (knowledge of the installed base, anticipation of interventions, changes to the configurations, etc.).