Spare parts classification in marine rescue and fire services' stores with case study

For maritime fire and rescue vessels, maintenance department is responsible for effectively maintain and repair vessels and improve their availability and agility. In order to accomplish these responsibilities, maintenance activities should be realized on time without any backlog. To attain this state of performance, different spare-parts should be available on time. On the other side, the excess inventorying of spare-parts induces high-cost penalties. To find a compromise between availability of spare-parts and the associated cost, firms should develop spare-parts management system. The current paper presents a management approach for spare-parts of the fire and rescue vessels. The proposed approach relies on spare-parts criticality classification according to a set of predefined criteria. First, the most important criteria are identified relies on the DEMATEL method. Using the emphasized criteria, the spare-parts are classified using the analytical hierarchy process. Based on the criticality index obtained, the management strategies of spare-parts are proposed. The proposed approach was applied to the spare-parts inventory of the fire and rescue vessels in the Kuwait Fire Service Directorate.