Process Flow of Goods in Service Inventories

The following figure shows the process flow of goods in a service inventory.

At the center of the process flow is the service parts life cycle, a closed-loop process. The life cycle includes the following stages: receiving (good), order placement, picking and shipping, in-transit, customer, receive, test and sort, repair, restock to good, and back again to receiving (good). Incoming goods from the manufacturer arrive at the receiving (good) stage. Goods go out to field service engineers during the in-transit and receive stages. Through the field service engineers, these goods go to customer sites through an in-transit stage for on-site repairs or replacements. Goods also leave the life cycle during the repair stage, when the outsource vendor can test, repair, scrap, recycle, and replace the goods.

A materials manager can automate these tasks using the Fulfillment or Part Locator Engines. The Replenishment Engine automates the production of orders to restock inventory locations. For more information, see Cycle Counting and Replenishment.