An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) is generally perceived as a company that produces parts and equipment that may be marketed by another manufacturer. The term is also used in several other ways, which causes ambiguity. It sometimes means the maker of a system that includes other companies' subsystems, an end-product producer, an automotive part that is manufactured by the same company that produced the original part used in the automobile's assembly, or a value-added reseller.
Logistics is the part of supply chain management that deals with the efficient forward and reverse flow of goods, services, and related information from the point of origin to the point of consumption according to the needs of customers. Logistics management is a component that holds the supply chain together. The resources managed in logistics may include tangible goods such as materials, equipment, and supplies, as well as food and other consumable items.
The technical meaning of maintenance involves functional checks, servicing, repairing or replacing of necessary devices, equipment, machinery, building infrastructure, and supporting utilities in industrial, business, and residential installations. Over time, this has come to include multiple wordings that describe various cost-effective practices to keep equipment operational; these activities occur either before or after a failure.
Inventory or stock refers to the goods and materials that a business holds for the ultimate goal of resale, production or utilisation.
A line-replaceable unit (LRU), lower line-replaceable unit (LLRU), line-replaceable component (LRC), or line-replaceable item (LRI) is a modular component of an airplane, ship or spacecraft that is designed to be replaced quickly at an operating location. The different lines (distances) are essential for logistics planning and operation. An LRU is usually a sealed unit such as a radio or other auxiliary equipment. LRUs are typically assigned logistics control numbers (LCNs) or work unit codes (WUCs) to manage logistics operations.
Purchasing is the procurement process a business or organization uses to acquire goods or services to accomplish its goals. Although there are several organizations that attempt to set standards in the purchasing process, processes can vary greatly between organizations.
A distribution center for a set of products is a warehouse or other specialized building, often with refrigeration or air conditioning, which is stocked with products (goods) to be redistributed to retailers, to wholesalers, or directly to consumers. A distribution center is a principal part, the order processing element, of the entire order fulfillment process. Distribution centers are usually thought of as being demand driven. A distribution center can also be called a warehouse, a DC, a fulfillment center, a cross-dock facility, a bulk break center, and a package handling center. The name by which the distribution center is known is commonly based on the purpose of the operation. For example, a "retail distribution center" normally distributes goods to retail stores, an "order fulfillment center" commonly distributes goods directly to consumers, and a cross-dock facility stores little or no product but distributes goods to other destinations.
Remanufacturing is "the rebuilding of a product to specifications of the original manufactured product using a combination of reused, repaired and new parts". It requires the repair or replacement of worn out or obsolete components and modules. Parts subject to degradation affecting the performance or the expected life of the whole are replaced. Remanufacturing is a form of a product recovery process that differs from other recovery processes in its completeness: a remanufactured machine should match the same customer expectation as new machines.
Integrated logistics support (ILS) is a technology in the system engineering to lower a product life cycle cost and decrease demand for logistics by the maintenance system optimization to ease the product support. Although originally developed for military purposes, it is also widely used in commercial customer service organisations.
A field-replaceable unit (FRU) is a printed circuit board, part, or assembly that can be quickly and easily removed from a computer or other piece of electronic equipment, and replaced by the user or a technician without having to send the entire product or system to a repair facility. FRUs allow a technician lacking in-depth product knowledge to isolate faults and replace faulty components. The granularity of FRUs in a system impacts total cost of ownership and support, including the costs of stocking spare parts, where spares are deployed to meet repair time goals, how diagnostic tools are designed and implemented, levels of training for field personnel, whether end-users can do their own FRU replacement, etc.
Mobile asset management is managing availability and serviceability of assets used to move, store, secure, protect and control inventory within the enterprise and along the supply chain or in conjunction with service providing.
An automobile repair shop is an establishment where automobiles are repaired by auto mechanics and technicians. The customer interface is typically a service advisor, traditionally called a service writer.
Equipment rental, or plant hire, is a service industry providing machinery, equipment and tools for a limited period of time to final users, mainly to construction contractors but also to industry and individual consumers. Renting can be defined as paying someone for the use of something for temporary or short-term purposes.
In the United States Navy, Refueling and Overhaul (ROH) refers to a lengthy refitting process or procedure performed on nuclear-powered naval ships, which involves replacement of expended nuclear fuel with new fuel and a general maintenance fix-up, renovation, and often modernization of the entire ship. In theory, such process could simply involve only refueling or only an overhaul, but in practice, nuclear refueling is always combined with an overhaul. An ROH usually takes one to two years for submarines and up to almost three years for an aircraft carrier, performed at a naval shipyard. Time periods between ROHs on a ship have varied historically from about 5–20 years (for submarines) to up to 25 years (for Nimitz-class aircraft carriers). For modern submarines and aircraft carriers, ROHs are typically carried out about midway through their operating lifespan. There are also shorter maintenance fix-ups called availabilities for ships periodically at shipyards. A particularly lengthy refueling, maintenance, and modernization process for a nuclear aircraft carrier can last up to almost three years and be referred to as a Refueling and Complex Overhaul (RCOH).
Sierra Army Depot (SIAD) is a United States Army post and military equipment storage facility located near the unincorporated community of Herlong, California. It was built in 1942 as one of several ammunition storage facilities located far enough inland to be safe from Japanese attack, yet close enough to western military posts and ports to facilitate shipment of supplies. The site also met the requirement that the depot be in a dry and isolated area.
Pay on production (PoP) is a special build-operate-transfer (BOT) model, where payment is made to a supplier by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM) per piece produced on the supplier's own equipment by the OEM's employees.
Level of Repair Analysis (LORA) is used as an analytical methodology used to determine where an item will be replaced, repaired, or discarded based on cost considerations and operational readiness requirements. For a complex engineering system containing thousands of assemblies, sub-assemblies, components, organized into several levels of indenture and with a number of possible repair decisions, LORA seeks to determine an optimal provision of repair and maintenance facilities to minimize overall system life-cycle costs.
Cannibalization of machine parts, in the maintenance of mechanical or electronic systems with interchangeable parts, refers to the practice of removing parts or subsystems necessary for repair from another similar device, rather than from inventory, usually when resources become limited. The source system is usually crippled as a result, perhaps only temporarily, in order to allow the recipient device to function properly again.
Tool management is needed in metalworking so that the information regarding the tools on hand can be uniformly organized and integrated. The information is stored in a database and is registered and applied using tool management. Tool data management consists of specific data fields, graphics and parameters that are essential in production, as opposed to managing general production equipment.
The term power assembly refers to an Electro-Motive Diesel (EMD) engine sub-assembly designed to be "easily" removed and replaced in order to restore engine performance lost to wear or engine failure. Typical of heavy-duty internal combustion engines used in industrial applications, EMD engines are designed to allow the cylinder liners, pistons, piston rings and connecting rods to be replaced at overhaul without removing the entire engine assembly from its application location. This increases engine value, reduces downtime and allows the engine to be returned to true new engine performance. Other terms such as cylinder pack, liner pack, cylinder assembly and cylinder kit are used in the engine industry to describe similar assemblies. In the large-engine industry, the term "power assembly" has also become generic and is often used to refer to the assemblies used in non-EMD engines where "power pack" may be the preferred term, although both terms are functionally the same.
