Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Technical Review
    Vol. 59 No. 1 (2022)   New Products & Technologies
    Technical Papers

    Inventory Strategy Planning Technology Supporting Expansion of MRO Business

    YO MORIMOTO
    DAISHI IRIE
    WEIHENG WU
    YUICHI KOGA

    One of the important issues to be considered of MRO (Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul) business, which provides inspections and maintenance of products including repair and overhaul, is how much inventory should be held for operating the business. It is necessary to conduct many case studies based on market and supplier trends and shorten the maintenance period under constraints for minimizing costs. In general, the maintenance period and cost are often affected by the inventory level and the determination of how much the inventory level should be (inventory strategy) is the key to the operation of this service. In the past, this strategy was determined based on experience and intuition and there was room for improvement. Therefore, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. has developed a technology for calculating the optimum inventory level based on a theoretical planning technology centered on mathematical optimization and have been using the technology to expand our MRO business. This report presents an overview of this technology, our original inventory strategy planning technology and application examples.