PLCS Statement of Technical Requirements. Technical Requirements Product Life Cycle Support. Configuration Management, страница 15

4.4  Inventory Management

4.4.1  Part Definition

As a first priority within Inventory Management, PLCS should seek to define all of the product design data needed by an Inventory Manager (i.e. functional, physical and support design information) for all parts used by/in/for the system.  This would include:

·  Parts details, including alternatives, and known suppliers etc (sufficient for classification and unique identification within a Parts Library)

·  Predicted usage rates for all spare parts, for all versions of the product in all predicted operating and usage scenarios

·  Consumable usage (e.g oil type and rate of use)

·  Design and Standards of packaging

·  Handling and Storage requirements

·  Repair Administration Procedures for removed parts

This would be achieved by the development of a set of interchange specs/conformance classes that can exchange the data needed.

4.4.2  Management Activity

PLCS should cover the Inventory Management activity for a single product (i.e. the information needed to manage, issue and account for an integrated inventory of parts specific to the single product). PLCS will not addresses the complexity of managing an inventory system supporting a mixed range of products. The information set includes :

·  historic demand

·  predicted future demand

·  available funding

·  minimum stock levels

·  re-order quantities

·  stock management policy (including storage locations)

·  Electronic Commerce protocols i.e. a Logistics Supply Support Plan.

4.4.3  Management Assumptions

Supply Chain Management must address the issues of "pipeline times" in the supply chain. These include :

·  The time taken to deliver a part, on demand, from the store location to the point of need

·  The time taken to return a defective item for repair and receive it back into the pool of serviceable stock

·  The time taken to remanufacture a part from source information (i.e. RAMP)

The Supply Support Plan should satisfy the spares support requirement determined during the support engineering activity. The solution will contain sparing decisions based upon a set of generic operational scenario assumptions that include pipeline time definitions. As part of the Supply Chain Management activity, there must be an ability to rework the solution in real time to provide recommendations on an optimum sparing policy to meet a specific operational requirement. The activity must also be able to address the procedures necessary to achieve reduced pipeline times to satisfy urgent operational demands.

5.  INFORMATION REQUIREMENTS

This section presents the detailed information requirements developed for the PLCS initiative. It is a working document and represents a snapshot of on going work. The Express diagrams presented in this section are provided as visual aids to better describe the requirements and NOT as modeling solutions.

5.1  What is “PRODUCT”?

Defining a ‘product’ is complex because there are many ways of looking at the same thing. STEP defines a product as ‘a thing or substance produced by natural or artificial processes’. Use of the word ‘produced’ in the above definition may communicate the idea that a product is always a physically existing object. This is not true. At the very early stage of its life cycle, a product may exist as simply as concept described by the customer needs and operational requirements. At the end of the design phase a product may be seen as physically realizable object or ‘design’. It becomes a physically existing object only at the end of the manufacturing process. Once realized the product is to be supported throughout the life cycle.