Abstract
Inventory Management is an important discipline
that identifies tracking of software and hardware assets for
manufacturing, maintenance, or retail purposes. Inventory
management systems and processes can use similar terms as in
literature but the environment where the asset’s inventory is used
determines the requirements for that asset. Availability of
locomotives for operations is key in supporting the economy of
the country; therefore, locomotive availability should always be
high. The current inventory management process is not fully
utilized to support the locomotive maintenance business
efficiency. Most failures in locomotives are due to electronic
modules so it is important to efficiently manage the electronic
inventory items for locomotive maintenance. The requirements
for inventory management system needs to be elicited from the
experts in the locomotive maintenance business. The stakeholders
are engaged using the interview method to get the ideal
requirements per their expertise. The Delphi method is adopted
to validate a set of gathered requirements and the Likert scale of
1 to 5 points is used to draw consensus from the participating
experts through a statistical group response. The research data
shows a set of gathered requirements elicited from the
stakeholders. The requirements are validated and the
recommendations made based on the findings. It can be drawn
from the results of using the Likert scale that the inventory
management system would work better if enhanced by
automated sub-systems such as barcode systems and point-of-sale
machines. This paper is the first that provides additional
requirements from a population of stakeholders and recommends
that further research is made to find out about the impact of
using latest technologies to enhance inventory management of
electronic modules for locomotive maintenance.