With 70 large vessels worldwide and its headquarters in the Netherlands, Royal Boskalis Westminster NV is one of the world leaders of the dredging world.
Given the complex logistical situation (global locations and sailing equipment) which Boskalis has to deal with, they have a considerable amount of spare parts on stock on board of the vessels and in the central warehouse. A complicating factor is that the different vessels all used have their own article databases available, which caused a large number of articles to appear multiple times under different numbers and descriptions in the current Maximo system. Mainnovation has helped Boskalis to launch an improvement program that consists of the following components:

• cleaning up the item catalog, through eliminating duplicates and standardize the article descriptions and specifications 
• introduction of EOQ (Economic Order Quantity) and ROP (Reorder points) on board of te vessels and ashore for the fast moving articles
• optimization of the inventory level of critical spare parts.

The optimization of the inventory level of critical spare parts was done by weighing the risk of not having an article on stock (downtime costs) against the inventory costs. This was done by a tool developed by Mainnovation, that calculates the optimal amount of spare parts, taking into account costs including arrest, MTBF, inventory costs on shore and on the ship, delivery times and prices.
At this moment for 4 large newbuilding ships the critical spare parts inventory level has been calculated and the optimization of the current stock levels has been launched.