The servicisation of the cutting tool supply chain

Managing maintenance, repair, operation (MRO) and spare parts supply is a critical issue for expensive repairable items such as cutting tools in the metal cutting industry. A new type of servicisation model in the cutting tool supply chain is evolving to solve the MRO problem. A review of the literature reveals that most research focuses on each aspect of the local optimisation of operational issues in isolation (i.e., tool monitoring, spare parts management, logistics, and scheduling problems) and does not sufficiently investigate the synthesis of the tool management and procurement. Innovation in technologies, such as radio frequency identification (RFID) and web services for information sharing, provide the ability to plan and schedule the tool requirement across different layers in the MRO supply chain. However, their impact on the usability and complexity of the resulting business processes is uncertain. In order to help organisations analyse their business processes, this paper examines such processes based on technology usability and process complexity to provide an evaluation approach for the design phase. Ultimately, the implementation of these evaluation models can help organisations analyse the business processes for further improvement.