Breakdowns and system failures caused by insufficient maintenance can have huge effects and negative economic impact. Hence, the effective and efficient management of spare parts supply chains has become crucial for achieving competitive advantage in today’s more and more complex production networks. Spare part supply chains cover maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) services for machinery equipment by providing spare parts and service personnel at the required location and time. In practice, there is not a “one size fits all” spare part supply chain, but they evolved over time and differ regarding several characteristics, e.g., organizational forms and structures, type of companies involved, collaborating processes and digitization.

Hence, this Master thesis aims at systemizing collaborations and coordination in spare parts supply chains. A taxonomy for spare parts supply chains should be developed considering their organizational and collaborative characteristics in order to enable an overview of the current status quo. First, a literature review in the domain of taxonomies will yield insights for choosing an appropriate taxonomy development approach. Furthermore, the relevant research domains and streams in literature of supply chain coordination and collaborations as well as spare parts supply chains (SPSC) should be investigated in order to identify specific characteristics that influence the coordination of the involved SPSC companies and enable the characterization and systemization of SPSC. The actual taxonomy will be developed by applying a combined approach of deduction and induction. Deduction considers the previously identified SPSC characteristics from a conceptual point of view. Induction is based on empirical data from a current company survey. The findings will be synthesized and structured in the taxonomy. The empirical data set should also be used to identify classes of SPSC to accompany the taxonomy. For this, classes of similar SPSC will be identified and highlighted by analyzing the data set with e.g. clustering techniques or correlation analyses. Moreover, the importance of IT systems for coordinating the identified SPSC classes should be investigated. In order to assess the support for SPSC collaborations by IT systems, SPSC classes requirements for IT systems should be deduced and mapped with the capabilities of currently available IT systems in the field.

Literature:

• Nickerson, Robert C.; Varshney, Upkar; Muntermann, Jan (2013): A method for taxonomy development and its application in information systems. In: European Journal of Information Systems 22 (3), S. 336–359. DOI: 10.1057/ejis.2012.26.
• Harland, Christine M.; Lamming, Richard C.; Zheng, Jurong; Johnsen, Thomas E. (2001): A Taxonomy of Supply Networks. In: The Journal of Supply Chain Management 37 (4), S. 21–27. DOI: 10.1111/j.1745-493X.2001.tb00109.x.
• Stadtler, Hartmut; Kilger, Christoph (2008): Supply Chain Management and Advanced Planning. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
• Wagner, S. M.; Lindemann, E. (2008): A case study-based analysis of spare parts management in the engineering industry. In: Production Planning & Control 19 (4), S. 397–407. DOI: 10.1080/09537280802034554.
• Huiskonen, Janne (2001): Maintenance spare parts logistics: Special characteristics and strategic choices. In: International Journal of Production Economics 71 (1), S. 125–133.
• For MRO overview: Baumbach, Michael; Stampfl, Alexander T. (2002): After-sales-Management. Marketing - Logistik - Organisation. München: Hanser (Pocket-Power Einkauf und Logistik, 118).