Back in 2003, I had a long talk with one of old friends who has since retired from the MOCO. Neal has it pretty much correct in what he says.
The Parts & Accessories group is a separate Profit & Loss(P&L) and has to forecast, purchase and stock their items under their own plan. For parts related to warranty and service issues, these items came right off the production line, or if there was an excess in the pipeline, they were pulled from there. However, this was rare since MOCO uses what is basically a "Just In Time" method of components management which dictates that only the bare minimum of parts, be kept the absolute minimum of time, to reduce inventory costs. The quantities are tied to the master schedule for manufacturing and any requirements for P&A, warranty, service, etc. are scheduled in this plan and fall behind the normal production of units on the line. If pulled from the line, the appropriate (warranty, service, etc.) profit center is then billed back from manufacturing for the item pulled from the line. Since there are varying levels of revisions at any one time on the lines, it's possible that a mix and match situation can come up because of this system.
In a previous lifetime, I was responsible for setting up and pre-positioning field spare kits to support electronic and electro-mechanical systems worldwide. We actually used the predicted failure rates (MTBF), returns history, location, climates, and fuction of the spare itself to determine the various spares listings, pricing, and packaging requirements. Doesn't look like this is the same approach the MOCO is using.
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Topic: HD & Spare Parts availability (Read 2148 times)