Abstract
today's highly competitive business landscape, manufacturing organisations are continually challenged to innovate and maintain competitiveness. The South African tyre manufacturing industry encounters a range of pressing challenges including an influx of inexpensive imported tyres, service delivery deficiencies, and escalating energy costs. These challenges compel tyre manufacturers to seek ways to expand their market presence and reduce costs.
To achieve lower unit costs and boost overall productivity, enhancing the operational availability of plant machinery is important. Implementing effective inventory management of spare parts is another vital approach to ensuring that critical spare parts are readily available in the right quantities when needed for both preventive and breakdown maintenance, thereby improving equipment availability and the overall productivity of manufacturing operations. Despite progress in the research of inventory and spare parts management, the implementation of spare parts management systems and techniques in South African manufacturing presents several challenges.
This research focused on investigating the impact of engineering spare parts management on the availability of tyre manufacturing equipment. Specifically, it examines how South African tyre manufacturers employ spare parts management techniques to mitigate stock-outs and enhance machinery availability.
The study gathered data using a survey questionnaire administered to individuals with expertise in engineering, purchasing, procurement, and supply chain. Primary data analysis was performed using statistical tools to address the research objectives. The survey results uncovered gaps in the use of spare parts management techniques, with only the basic applications of these methods. The findings pointed to the absence of a comprehensive spare parts management strategy, an obsolescence plan, and underutilisation of the enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to enhance overall operational efficiency (Ahmed, Khan and Raza, 2014).