Spare Parts Inventory Management Literature and Direction Towards the Use of Data Mining Technique

Abstract

In the current age of information technology, most of the industries have implemented integrated information systems or enterprise resource planning applications to automate their business process, reduce lead time, improve productivity and reduce cost. These industries generate large amount of inventory and maintenance related data on daily basis, which are stored in a central database. Data mining techniques are most suitable to discover valuable information from this large amount of data. The valuable information can be in the form of patterns, associations, classifications, changes etc. which can be helpful for maintenance and inventory managers for better decision making. This chapter reviews application of data mining technique in inventory management through a survey of literature and classified the articles. Also the chapter suggests other inventory management areas where data mining techniques can be applied for better decision making. Keywords and abstracts were used to identify 107 articles concerning management of inventory and application of data mining techniques.