Quantitative Methodology as a Means to Ensure Supply Continuity of Service Parts for Automotive Electronics

The assessment of spare parts quantities in the automotive electronic supplier world faces several problems specific to the industry. First and foremost the different lifecycles between the vehicle as the carrier system and the electronic device in question asks for a realistic quantitative model. Further, the actual demand is always a random number, which is influenced by the overall production volume of the underlying vehicle, the exchange rate of the device, the environment in which the vehicle and the device operate etc. The current paper sets up a basic statistical model for the distribution of the random future demand of an electronic device at the time, when one or more of its most central components are terminated by the manufacturer.