POOL STORES
Background
The National Authority of Civil Aviation, NACA, is a public sector undertaking reporting to the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Government of India. It is responsible for maintaining the facilities and services at 72 civilian airfields across the country. These airfields are categorized as A, B or C, depending on the facilities available there as well as the time required for these facilities to come on in case of an emergency such as power failure, breakdown, failure of equipment, etc. At any given time, the main idea behind functioning of the two systems was to be available at any given point of time. Apart from NACA, the Indian Air Force manages 54 airfields in the country and requires a high quantum of spares. With rapid advances in technology and a change of philosophy from repair to replacement, the chances of breakdown have reduced considerably, also the cost of spares have hiked. Both NACA and Air Force identified their respective non-moving stores that store spares for airfields from which items had not been used in the past 40 months. The summary of the number of items and costs associated with them are as follows- | NACA | Air force | Number of NON- moving item | 2012 | 2007 | Cost (in crores of rupees) | 902 | 777 |

Issues
The Non-moving spares are highly costly
One of the major concerns of both NACA and Air Force is the high cost of nonmoving spares which may become a dead stock in future. 67% of the maintenance stores of NACA which have a total of 2012 types of items had not been used in the last 40 months. The total non- moving inventory of both amounts to Rs 1679 crores, which has been blocked because of their non-usage. The problem here is that the inventory needs to be maintained: 1) Because of its uncertain demand; 2) As these items are procured from foreign manufacturers, their lead time is high. 3) The other problem here is that, this nonmoving inventory cannot be cashed as the higher authorities are not willing to take chances with 250 human life and national security. 4) The Air Force says that these stores provide protection against stock out during emergencies because these spares are sourced from foreign suppliers and have a long lead time. 5) Thus these stores are treated as assurance stores.

Analysis
The major cost is involved in cost of spare but we should also not overlook the growth in the aviation industry and there are fewer repairs as compared to earlier and also with the booming industry we cannot take chances of not being able to provide the spares as and when required.
We should also not ignore the space and location of the stores so that spares are available to both Air force and NACA. We should consider the human safety and emergency aspects to decide upon the POOLSTORE idea.

Recommendation
We should make pool store since similar spares are being used. Also we should take into consideration the airfield requirements of NACA where there is exorbitant traffic and the air force located at critical places. For pool stores one can keep a place of safety stock for spares which requires on and off basis for both AIR FORCE and NACA so that the requirement of each is been fulfilled and there are no clashes between the two.
The lifting of getting the spares should of individual’s organization as we do picking in any kind of warehouse the same way it could be done by both of these organization. This results into demand fulfillment at the time of emergency and at the time of WAR.
Most of the non-moving items (929) are common to both and costs can be reduced if both purchase these items together

Learning
If the non-moving items are stocked which are high in cost and could create problems in blocking capital which can create a domestic level issue since high level of amount is involved. Pool stores could implement software such as warehouse management system which would make the functioning of the warehouse easier.

You have been given the power to decide. What will you decide and why?
If the Pool Stores store the items catering to both the civil airports and the Air Force bases, it would help in reducing the cost of the inventory. And also, the Pool Stores can meet the demands of all the Air Fields within a radius of 150 to 200Km and availability of spares within a time period 1 to 1.5 hours. But a major problem of availability may become an issue during an emergency (such as war) and high traffic airfields in case of any failure of a system. Thus this idea of Pool Stores cannot be considered for all the airfields. Top-level DOD officials must be supportive of and engaged in Air Force reengineering efforts to remove these barriers and drive success.
Some of these initiatives include
(1) The benefits of transferring inventory management responsibilities to third parties,
(2) The use of supplier distribution centers that enable suppliers to respond to customer needs within a few hours,
(3) The application of repair process improvements that reduce the time to conduct repairs,
And
(4) The upgrade of facilities that magnify the success of reengineered processes.
The lifting of getting the spares should of individual’s organization as we do picking in any kind of warehouse the same way it could be done by both of these organization. This results into demand fulfillment at the time of emergency and at the time of WAR.
Most of the non-moving items (929) are common to both and costs can be reduced if both purchase these items together.
Even this pattern can be used in other industries such as transport industry, shipping industry,etc.