Lifecycle management of critical automation related spare parts

Abstract

The after-sales service business including both maintenance work and spare parts is very profitable business to any company selling tangible capital goods. The income coming from the business is constant and long-lived. The spare parts alone cover a huge part of the income and especially being the original equipment manufacturer, the pricing is not always the main factor in the competition. Providing top quality parts and delivering them in time is crucial to earn and sustain the customer trust and credibility. The equipment used in the aggregates business has traditionally long service life and spare parts are needed throughout the whole service life. Traditional drawing based steel structures and machined spare parts can be produced afterwards in relatively short time regardless the time past it was last produced. It is the developing technology and electronic components that bring challenges as the equipment age. As technology keeps developing, old technology will inevitable become obsolete. The low sales volumes force the suppliers to discontinue the product and end the manufacturing. Another scenario is that the supplier is depended on another supplier and discontinuance occurring at the depended supplier affects the original supplier forcing it to discontinue a complete product due to discontinued component. An electronic component supplier is often the sole supplier of the component and the component cannot be bought elsewhere. Due to service agreements or as a part of company general policy, a company may need to provide spare parts despite the technology obsolescence. The obsolescence can be avoided or at least the company can mitigate to the coming obsolescence by taking proper precautions. The ways achieving this are dwelled in this thesis work. There are useful tools available which can be taken in to active use directly in order to mitigate to component obsolescence, but a way for obtaining and maintaining to most recent information available for each component availability had to be developed. This thesis concentrates in lifecycle management and component obsolescence at component level and the ways how to proactively take precautions to prevent any potential problems the obsolescence will cause. Proposed actions are introduced.