Title: Spare parts management at automobile service centre using artificial neural network

Authors: Rishu Sharma; Suresh Garg

Addresses: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Delhi Technological University, Delhi-110042, India. ' Department of Mechanical Engineering, Delhi Technological University, Delhi-110042, India

Abstract: Automobile industry is one of the rising industries in today's economy. One of major factors to sustain the growth is its efficient after-sales service network. The Automobile Service Centre (ASC) has large product variety as every vehicle has different repair or service needs. Owing to large variety of vehicles with different service requirement, the management of expensive spare parts is major challenge in efficient management of ASC. Inventory models have been used in past to determine the optimal inventory levels and reorder quantity but these models only consider the inventory carrying cost and ordering cost. The decision, in present context, is also influenced by size of service centre, criticality of item, unit price, etc. In this paper, ANN is used in two phases: first to determine the inventory policy and then to determine the parameters of the policy by taking the real case of an ASC in a metropolitan city.

Keywords: ANNs; artificial neural networks; ASC; automotive service centres; spare parts management; automobile industry; after-sales services; inventory policy.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSEM.2012.047043

International Journal of Services, Economics and Management, 2012 Vol.4 No.2, pp.122 - 144

Published online: 15 Nov 2014 *

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