Multi-vendor spare parts management

 

Today’s telecom network always contains equipment from multiple vendors, e.g. Ericsson, Nokia, Huawei, ZTE, Cisco, Juniper, etc. Telecom Service Providers and Managed Services Vendors need to manage spare parts inventories, repairs and logistics processes for all relevant vendors in the network.

The critical elements of managing a Multi-vendor Spare Parts Management (MV SPM) operations are

• – Availability of spare parts when the need arises
• – Managing the cost of spare parts inventory
• – Avoiding loss of spare parts (traceability) and write-offs
• – Avoiding Service Level Agreement (SLA) penalties.

The success hinges on an excellent warehouse and logistics management capability complemented with good interfaces to various supplier and partner systems.

Solution highlights

Our largest Catalyst³⁶⁵  cloud platform implementation of Multi-vendor Spare Parts Management processes covers over 26,000 sites with 74,000 elements and close to 200 warehouses.

The platform includes capabilities to

• – Plan spare parts levels and allocations according to customer SLA
• – Manage reverse logistics and faulty unit repair loop processes
• – Manage warehouses (inventory, in/out, stock takes)
• – Manage logistics service providers (warehouses and delivery tracking)
• – Follow repair vendor key performance indicators (KPIs).

The equipment Mean-Time between Failure (MTBF) values are used to calculate spare parts inventories within SLA distance to equipment sites. As spare parts are used, new spares are automatically sent down from higher level warehouses and faulty units are sent up the chain into repair centers.

Benefits

The Service Provider gains stock accuracy, traceability and transparency out of the solution. Our largest project stock accuracy was 99% over a five year project life cycle.

The Managed Service vendor protects margins by meeting SLA goals and avoiding compensation for equipment losses.

 

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