ABSTRACT
Inventory management is an interesting problem in the service sector, and spare parts management provides an additional challenge. In particular, holding too many spare parts ties up capital, whereas holding too few spare parts or the incorrect ones can lead to costly outages and lost orders if a part failure occurs. This chapter examines spare parts management via a case study of the nuclear power generation industry. This industry is unique and introduces additional nuances to the problem, which are outlined in the next section. However, the general approach outlined in this chapter can be applied to other industries having similar characteristics within the service sector.
