A proposal for estimating the order level for slow moving spare parts subject to obsolescence

During the last decade technologies have had a significant development in many areas, as military and civil protection, telecommunication and electrical distribution and production. Particularly in the mentioned areas we can find very complex products, with a cycle life generally longer than their components. Companies have thus the need to better manage the replacement of spare parts in order to reduce the holding costs and to satisfy the service level. In this paper authors analyse the state of the art about the spare parts logistic (SPL) problem for products characterized by a long cycle life and by slow moving spare parts subject to obsolescence. A new model to estimate the spare part order level is then proposed and tested on a simulated case.