Spare part

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For other uses, see Spare Parts (disambiguation).
A spare part, spare, service part, repair part, or replacement part, is an interchangeable part that
is kept in an inventory and used for the repair or replacement of failed units. Spare parts are an
important feature of logistics engineering and supply chain management, often comprising
dedicated spare parts management systems.
Capital spares are spare parts which, although acknowledged to have a long life or a small chance
of failure, would cause a long shutdown of equipment because it would take a long time to get a
replacement for them.
Spare parts are an outgrowth of the industrial development of interchangeable parts and mass
production.

Contents
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 1Classification
o 1.1Repairable
o 1.2Consumable
 2Legislation
 3Repair cycle
 4Inventory management
o 4.1Cannibalization
 5Commercial
 6Military
 7See also
 8References

Classification[edit]

A spare tire mounted at the rear of a Mitsubishi Type 73 Light Truck as an example of a repairable spare part.

In logistics, spare parts can be broadly classified into two groups, repairables and consumables.

Economically, there is a tradeoff between the cost of ordering a replacement part and the cost of
repairing a failed part. When the cost of repair becomes a significant percentage of the cost of
replacement, it becomes economically favorable to simply order a replacement part. In such cases,
the part is said to be "beyond economic repair" (BER), and the percentage associated with this
threshold is known as the BER rate. Analysis of economic tradeoffs is formally evaluated using Level
of Repair Analysis (LORA).
Repairable[edit]
Main article: Repairable
Repairable parts are parts that are deemed worthy of repair, usually by virtue of economic
consideration of their repair cost. Rather than bear the cost of completely replacing a finished
product, repairables typically are designed to enable more affordable maintenance by being more
modular. This allows components to be more easily removed, repaired, and replaced, enabling
cheaper replacement. Spare parts that are needed to support condemnation of repairable parts are
known as replenishment spares.
A rotable pool is a pool of repairable spare parts inventory set aside to allow for multiple repairs to
be accomplished simultaneously. This can be used to minimize stockout conditions for repairable
items.
Consumable[edit]
Main article: Consumables
Parts that are not repairable, are considered consumable parts. Consumable parts are
usually scrapped, or "condemned", when they are found to have failed. Since no attempt at repair is
made, for a fixed mean time between failures (MTBF), replacement rates for consumption of
consumables are higher than an equivalent item treated as a repairable part. Because of this,
consumables tend to be lower cost items.
Because consumables are lower cost and higher volume, economies of scale can be found by
ordering in large lot sizes, a so-called Economic order quantity.

Legislation[edit]
There is no UK or EU legislation which states that spare parts have to be available for any set period
of time [1] but some trade associations require their members to ensure products are not rendered
useless because spare parts are not available.[2] The 'six year rule' in the UK Sale of Goods Act
1979 relates to the time period for enforcing claims that goods where defective when sold, not to
whether spare parts are available to repair them, and section 23(3) of the Consumer Rights Act
2015 states that a consumer cannot require a trader to repair or replace goods if "the repair or
replacement is impossible", implying that if spare parts are no longer available the consumer's right
to repair (or to have a spare part supplied) would be lost.[3]

Repair cycle[edit]
From the perspective of logistics, a model of the life cycle of parts in a supply chain can be
developed. This model, called the repair cycle, consists of functioning parts in use by equipment
operators, and the entire sequence of suppliers or repair providers that replenish functional part
inventories, either by production or repair, when they have failed. Ultimately, this sequence ends
with the manufacturer. This type of model allows demands on a supply system to ultimately be
traced to their operational reliability, allowing for analysis of the dynamics of the supply system, in
particular, spare parts.

Inventory management[edit]
Main articles: Logistic engineering and Supply chain management
Cannibalization[edit]
Main article: Cannibalization (parts)
When stockout conditions occur, cannibalization can result. This is the practice of removing parts
or subsystems necessary for repair from another similar device, rather than from inventory. The
source system is usually crippled as a result, if only temporarily, in order to allow the recipient device
to function properly again. As a result, operational availability is impaired.

Commercial[edit]
Industrialization has seen the widespread growth of commercial manufacturing enterprises, such as
the automotive industry, and later, the computer industry. The resulting complex systems have
evolved modular support infrastructures, with the reliance on auto parts in the automotive industry,
and replaceable computer modules known as field-replaceable units (FRUs).

Military[edit]
Main article: Military logistics
Military operations are significantly affected by logistics operations. The system availability, also
known as mission capable rate, of weapon systems and the ability to effect the repair of damaged
equipment are significant contributors to the success of military operations. Systems that are in a
mission-incapable (MICAP) status due lack of spare parts are said to be "awaiting parts" (AWP), also
known as not mission capable due to supply (NMCS).
Because of this sensitivity to logistics, militaries have sought to make their logistics operations as
effective as possible, focusing effort on operations research and optimal maintenance. Maintenance
has been simplified by the introduction of interchangeable modules known as line-replaceable
units (LRUs). LRUs make it possible to quickly replace an unserviceable (failed) part with a
serviceable (working) replacement. This makes it relatively straightforward to repair complex military
hardware, at the expense of having a ready supply of spare parts.
The cost of having serviceable parts available in inventory can be tremendous, as items that are
prone to failure may be demanded frequently from inventory, requiring significant inventory levels to
avoid depletion. For military programs, the cost of spare inventory can be a significant portion
of acquisition cost.
In recent years, the United States Department of Defense (DoD) has advocated the use
of performance-based logistics (PBL) contracts to manage costs for support of weapon systems.