The development of an equipment management system for a parts distribution centre

Abstract

One of the greatest services rendered by the automobile industry is that of after-sales support to vehicle owners. At the Nissan after sales parts distribution centre (PDC), the main goal is to ensure that after-sales parts are delivered to the right dealers across South Africa, in the right quantities and at the right time. The challenge of finding balance between these activities lies in the optimum coordination of warehouse staff, material handling equipment and the customer order system. The material handling equipment (MHE) at the PDC was identified as a bottleneck of the customer order fulfilment process. For this reason a material handling equipment study was conducted with the focus on improving the equipment utilization. An Equipment Management System (EMS) that stores and processes valuable equipment information in the warehouse was developed. The logical design model of the EMS was developed to indicate what the system capabilities and limitations are. These capabilities and limitations were modelled into the physical design ensuring that stakeholder requirements were met. The benefits of this system include, life cycle cost tracking of each unit of equipment, equipment utilization history, maintenance support and a replacement decisions support system.