A Study Of Inventory Management Strategy Of Automobile After-sales Spare Parts: Based On Life-cycle Theory

With the rapid development of the automobile industry, after-sales service is effective towin competence, improve customers’ loyalty and gain profits. More and more automobilemanufacturers pay attention to this field. At the same time, with the upgraded frequencyof auto products, the category and volume of automobile after-sales spare parts have beenenlarged significantly, which brings the new problem and challenge to after-sales service.As an important part of after-sales service, spare parts service serves not only as itsfoundation, but also as one of the most important profit source for automobilemanufacturers. However, due to the fact that spare parts are usually of substantial amount,and its demand is fluctuating and hard to be forecasted, spare parts management hasalways been an issue that requires constant research efforts of automobile manufacturers.The improvement of spare parts management is based on reasonable inventorymanagement. The traditional inventory management methods doesn’t take the productlife-cycle into the consideration, single inventory management model can’t match therequirements of the more and more complicated inventory management of automobileafter-sales spare parts. This article inspects the traditional inventory managementmethods from the life-cycle theory perspective. Based on inventory management theoryand life-cycle management theory, this article analyzes the development and currentstatus of automobile after-sales market in China, as well as the characteristics anddifficulties of inventory management of automobile after-sales spare parts. Based onthese studies, the author puts forward the concept of inventory management strategy ofautomobile after-sales spare parts.This strategy combines both inventory management theory and life-cycle managementtheory, researches different stages of automobile after-sales spare parts’ life-cycle as wellas the characteristics, and purposes specific inventory management methods and strategyin each life-cycle stage, which helps to optimize the inventory structure, reduce inventorycost, and improve the spare parts management level.