Structural cooperation models and incentivization for cooperative inventory pooling-systems

To ensure the sufficient availability of technical systems, spare parts management in many companies is performance-oriented. Potential cost improvements are insufficiently realized. Companies are therefore increasingly searching for new spare parts management concepts. Cooperative inventory pooling has proven to be a useful way of reducing the cost of spare parts management while ensuring the required level of availability. To realize these improvements, established longterm cooperation is crucial. However, companies currently lack recommendations for structuring such a cooperation, while the necessary incentives remain unclear. The aim of this paper is therefore to present a description of three basic structural cooperation models. Selection criteria are defined that companies can use to identify the type of cooperation model that suits their specific requirements. In addition, an incentive system is specified with the aim of motivating interested companies to participate in the cooperation and to fairly balance the required effort. Both monetary and non-monetary incentives are considered. The results introduced in this paper are a basis to enable the necessary long-term success of cooperative inventory pooling-systems.