Research on Equipment and Spare Parts Management Based on Theory of Constraints

On the basis of analyzing the relationship between the equipment system and spare parts inventory, this paper proposes two-level equipment and spare parts system management based on the Theory of Constraints. From the system point of view and according to the Theory of Constraints, the manufacturing organization identifies bottleneck equipments in equipment system and makes the bottleneck equipments operate continuously and effectively on the basis of two important aspects of materials supply and spare parts supply. Finally, the spare parts’ ABCD-TOC inventory classification and control method based on the Theory of Constraints is introduced. This method classifies spare parts according to different demands of bottleneck and non-bottleneck equipments, technical rules of spare parts failure and waste and purchase characteristics. Then the suitable control strategies for each class are adopted to focus on bottleneck equipments without sacrificing the spare parts supply for non-bottleneck equipments, as well as to reduce inventory investment.