Management of spare parts for efficient maintenance: a case study in the dairy sector

The recent increase in automation in production systems increased the relevance of maintenance management and spare parts availability to improve productivity while reducing the downtimes of the equipment. Despite the large number of studies on the topic, there is still a lack of practical applications in the industrial environment which can underline real practical needs and not only theoretical ones. The objective of this study is to improve the management of the spare parts warehouse of a company in the dairy sector to support maintenance management, defining optimal reorder quantities and/or safety stocks to minimize warehouse costs and increase component availability, especially of those items considered most critical. The practical work concerned the coding and classification of the spare parts, the demand forecasting, the definition of the most appropriate inventory policy for each spare part, and finally the testing and validation of the proposed policies.