Joint prioritization and optimization of critical spare part provisioning

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Canadian Bearings Ltd. (CB) is a Mississauga-based company that provides industrial equipment and services to manufacturers and is seeking to expand its service offerings in the area of asset management, which is defined as "the coordinated activity of an organization to realize value from its assets". Medium-sized manufacturing companies may lack the internal capacity for the application of cutting edge asset management and they may feel priced out of the market by the major software application vendors and consultancies. In addition, a medium-sized company may lack the data that can be required to make the very best asset management decisions. Therefore, CB sees an opportunity to differentiate itself in the highly competitive global industrial equipment market by offering asset management services in a cost-effective manner. One key area of asset management is the determination of the correct number of critical spare parts to keep in stock. There are two decisions to be me: which parts are critical and should receive focus, and what is the correct number of spares to stock? CB will work with the Centre for Maintenance Optimization and Reliability Engineering (C-MORE) at the University of Toronto to adapt C-MORE's expertise in critical spare parts provisioning to create a tool to jointly prioritize and optimize critical spare parts provisioning that will use data from the potential customer along with sales data CB maintains to produce the best possible answer.