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A process for estimating the expected demand for spare parts, components, subsystems, etc. necessary for future repairs or replacements. There are many potential processes for conducting the analysis, ranging from using historical demand graphical or statistical analysis or algorithms that account for minimum order quantities, discounts, order to arrival times, etc. By performing spares forecasting, a demand forecast for each item used as a spare useful to maintain the appropriate number of spares in stock is created to avoid having too many or too few spares.
Traditional spare parts or inventory calculation methods involving Min-Max levels lack rigor, especially for critical equipment. Reliability, Availability and Maintainability (RAM) models provide a better approach to this calculation.
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