Inventory Management and Maintenance in Offshore Vessel Industry

An evaluation of the inventory policy at an offshore vessel company was conducted. Currently the items in inventory are used at random intervals as they are used only when parts fail. To solve the problem of reducing a very large inventory but keep enough to allow an uninterrupted service to the customer, we propose a real and economically efficient multicriteria inventory policy using inventory classification method integrated with a preventive maintenance program. The proposed method can be summarized in the following three steps: first, rank the parts according to both the lead time from supplier and the cost of downtime failure and use a matrix display to show the most critical items. In the second step develop a preventive maintenance program for the most critical parts to minimize downtime due to failure. Finally in the third step standardize most critical parts to reduce the inventory which saves the company money while maintaining the same level of service to its customers. Our study showed that the company with a very large inventory could effectively reduce its size by focusing on key parts.