Abstract:
Naturelink Aviation is involved in Private Air Charters, Aircraft Leasing, Aircraft Sales, In-
house Training and Maintenance. The company has a fleet of eleven Embraer EMB120 and
six PAC P750XL aircraft contracted in services across Africa. Naturelink Aviation seeks
improvement regarding the management of inventory for unscheduled maintenance at
outstations in Africa.
It was established that the company does not have an automated inventory systems for the
outstations, mainly because outstations are dependent on contracts. Currently the engineer at
the outstation has to manage the unscheduled maintenance inventory and determine when
top-up stock needs to be ordered.
The decision was made to develop a multiproduct Economic Order Quantity model to
determine optimal order quantities, number of cycles and order times. The main objective is
to determine when items of different frequency usage can be ordered together instead of
sending orders only days apart.
After this project it was clear that reorder points often coincide or happen close together in
addition to the crew rotation schedule. This information enabled the development of a
sample reorder schedule, it requires constant updated and verifications, because reorder
points and EOQs may change. Naturelink Aviation will now test the schedule and if needed
rectifications and adjustments will be made before the final distribution and implementation
among the fleet.
