SAS^® Service Parts Optimization

For manufacturers producing expensive goods with long service lives, it is crucial to manage service parts operations as efficiently and profitably as possible. But even for organizations with ultra-efficient production and delivery supply chains, several factors make it difficult to manage service parts effectively:

In the Spotlight SAS Service Parts Optimization Interactive Tour SAS Service Intelligence View the video commentary of Mark Vigoroso from Aberdeen Group. View video: Windows Media Player RealPlayer

It is hard to save money on service parts inventory while maintaining high customer service levels. There is often no way to minimize inventories, develop flexible networks or rationalize delivery strategies. The erratic nature of service parts demand, along with the difficulties of new product introduction and end-of-life planning, makes it a struggle to create accurate demand forecasts. SAS Service Parts Optimization provides service organizations the ability to forecast short-term, new-part and lifecycle parts demand. The solution also calculates optimized inventory and order quantities for parts distribution systems, thus helping you maintain adequate stock levels, maximize response times and improve customer satisfaction. SAS Service Parts Optimization is designed for complex global environments, scales to large volumes of data, and includes performance management dashboards and scorecards as well as optimization routines that are customized for service department needs. The solution provides: Forecasting. Accurately and automatically produce millions of forecasts on short-term, new-part and lifecycle parts demand to plan and execute spare parts inventory and processes. Inventory optimization. Calculate optimal inventory levels and policies based on user-specified constraints such as service levels and user-defined inputs such as lead times and costs. Reporting. Produce a number of standard and ad hoc reports, including reports showing your most overstocked items, the impact of overstocks and stock-outs on costs, and even the largest recommended changes in ordered quantities for particular items.

Key benefits

• Reduce inventory holding, ordering and backorder penalty costs.
• Calculate optimal inventory replenishment policies.
• Develop better replenishment strategies for fast-moving items.
• Base your service parts strategy on information from all service systems across the enterprise.
• Align service parts strategies by sharing appropriate information with service professionals throughout the organization.

SAS Service Parts Optimization is a component of SAS Service Intelligence, an integrated set of solutions for the post-production, aftermarket service chain that also includes SAS Warranty Analysis and SAS Service Operations Optimization. By starting with SAS Service Parts Optimization and then extending to other components within the SAS Service Intelligence suite of solutions, organizations can gain even greater benefit with the capability to monitor, predict and optimize the entire service chain. This family of flexible, extensible solutions includes prebuilt, service chain-specific data and analytical models, as well as streamlined processes and techniques that speed up both implementation and results, giving you a fast track to significant ROI.