It happened again.

Maintenance requested more expendables for a routine task card and yet again, you haven't dealt with the material since 1999.

Now, you have to go source and purchase this material. And more than likely, maintenance needed it yesterday.

We call this material ad-hoc. There’s no way you’ll ever be able to plan for it.

The stress. The turmoil. The anxiety.

A perfect example of what an ad-hoc aircraft expendable is

Recently we reviewed a Request for Proposal (RFP) from a client for our Vendor Managed Inventory program.

They sent 4,000 line items they wanted a bid on for their "yearly" consumption.

Fair enough. Sounds good. Let’s do it.

As we reviewed the RFP, something seemed strange. Certain material had very low consumption for the past 3 years.

So we asked...

For the low consumption items, based on our forecasting model, you will not have a yearly demand. What’s your goal for these?

The answer: “We need to know you can cover the items. There will be no guarantee of consumption and we can’t calculate how much we’ll need this year.”

And that my friends...is ad-hoc aircraft expendables at it’s best.

Overcome the ad-hoc madness

An ad-hoc aircraft expendable is something that cannot be planned. Your consumption is simply...ALL OVER.

You can’t plan for this material.

Sure, you can stock it for just in case situations, but I’d say this is a terrible decision. The likelihood of this material causing you an AOG is minimal.

So just breath.

But what you can do is automate your high consumption items into a vendor managed inventory. This will give you more time and resources to focus on the ad-hoc material.

Or better yet, because ad-hoc expendables will be part of your daily life, consolidate them with current shipments.

Make them easier to source, process, chase, and trace.

That’s the goal. Because you can’t forecast or plan them, make them easier to manage.

Simple, right?