HOW TO MEASURE A LOGISTICS SYSTEM..?

Measures of Logistics

To establish, that logistics is properly addressed throughout its life cycle, one must establish the appropriate measurements to support requirements in the early stages of conceptual design. These measures are;

1. Reliability factors – the profitability that a system or product will perform in a satisfactory manner for a given period of time, under specified operating conditions. Reliability is highly depended on the Frequency of maintenance of that item. When frequency of maintenance decreases reliability increases and vice versa. Extensive maintenance is required for unreliable systems.

2. Maintainability factors - maintainability means an inherent design characteristic dealing with the ease, accuracy, safety, and economy in the performance of maintenance functions. Maintainability factors can be measured in terms of elapsed time, personal labour hour rates, maintenance frequencies, maintenance cost, related logistics support factors.

Corrective maintenance – unscheduled actions, initiated as a result to restore a system to its required level of performance. These activities are troubleshooting, disassembly, and repair, remove & replace reassembly.

Preventive maintenance – scheduled actions necessary to retain a system at a specified level of performance. Theses activities include periodic inspections, servicing, calibration, and condition monitoring. Elapsed time can be reduced by applying additional human resources. The objective is to maintain a proper balance between elapsed time, labour time and personnel skills at a minimum maintenance cost.

3. Supply support factors – It includes the spare parts and the associated inventories for the accomplishment of maintenance actions.

1. Spares are major replacement items that are repairable, whereas the repair parts are non-repairable smaller components.
2. At each maintenance level, one must determine the type of spare parts, quantity to be purchased and stocked, frequency of ordering and order lot.
3. An additional stock level should be maintained in order to meet the following situations;

1. To compensate for the procurement lead times required for item acquisition
2. To compensate for repairable items in the process of undergoing maintenance
3. To compensate for the condemnation or scrapage of repairable items

4. Transport, packaging, and handling factors

It includes the movement of human and material resources, in support of both operational and maintenance activities. The factors to be considered are;

1. Transportation route, both national and international
2. Transportation capability or capacity
3. Transportation time, cost and made
4. Products transported must e designed in such a way to eliminate damage, possible degradation etc.
5. Does the package incorporate the desired strength and material characteristics
6. Can it stand rough handling or long term storage without degradation
7. Does the package provide adequate protection against various environmental conditions such as rain, temperature etc.
8. Is the package sufficient with existing transportation and handling method

5. Test and support equipment factors

These factors include precision electronic best equipments, mechanical test equipments, ground handling equipments, special jigs and fixtures, maintenance stands etc. The objective is to provide the right item for the job intended, at the proper location, and in quantity required.

6. Organizational factors

These factors includes

1. Direct maintenance labor time
2. Indirect labor time required
3. Personnel attrition rate
4. Personnel training rate
5. Number of maintenance work orders
6. Average administrative delay time.

The right personnel quantities and skills must be available when required, and the individuals trained and motivated.

7. Facility factors

Different factors in facility are;

1. Item process time or turn around item – it is the elapsed time necessary to process an item for maintenance, returning it to full operational status.
2. Facility utilization – it is the ratio of time utilized to the time to the time available for use, perfect utilization in terms of space occupancy and so on.
3. Energy utilization is the process of maintenance.
4. Total facility cost for the system operation and support.

8. Software factors

Software can be suppliment to many of the maintenance functions. Thus it should be evaluated in terms of language levels or complexity, number of programs, cost per maintenance etc.

1. Software cannot degrade in the same way as equipment; the reliability is important and must be measured.
2. Software reliability is the probability of failure free operation of a software component or system in a specified environment for a specified time.

9. Technical data and information system factors

The objectives of these factors are to;

1. Simplify the task of generating and processing technical data through;

Better packaging, eliminating redundancies, reducing processing time, and accessible of information to all organizations.

2. It provides a means for the introduction of design changes and for better implementation of configuration management requirements.
3. It also enables faster, timely, accurate and more reliable communications between multiple locations on a current basis.

10. Availability factors

It is often used as a measure of system readiness (i.e. the probability that a system will be readily available when required for use). They are of 3 types;

1. Inherent
2. Achieved
3. Operational