Patent ID: 8229791

Claim:
A computer program product for managing a supply chain process to maintain equipment, said computer program product comprising a computer-readable storage medium having computer-readable program code embodied in said medium, the computer-readable program code comprising: a first executable portion for identifying and capturing data relevant to one or more sets of equipment maintenance requirements for a customer; a second executable portion for providing access to the capabilities of a plurality of inventory management, supply chain management, and equipment maintenance applications for preprocessing of the identified and captured data; a third executable portion for receiving the preprocessed data from the plurality of applications; a fourth executable portion for integrating the preprocessed data into a solution to the one or more sets of equipment maintenance requirements by: grouping a plurality of service parts by functionality to create a plurality of functional groupings of service parts, determining an appropriate distribution for statistical demand forecasting of a functional grouping, using the same distribution to generate the statistical demand forecast for service parts of the same functional grouping, and using a library to cross-reference which distribution applies to which functional grouping; and a fifth executable portion operable to: determine a ratio of service part failure rates based upon a percentage of time in which a service part of the plurality of service parts operates in specific operating modes associated with the service part; and calculate a supply availability of at least a portion of the plurality of service parts based on the determined ratios of service part failure rates corresponding to the portion of the service parts.