The importance of spare parts trade in modern commercial aviation industry cannot be overstated. In fact, data provided by ICF SH&E indicates that the spare parts market has grown by over $5 billion in 12 years’ time, currently accounting for almost a half of the overall MRO market. Moreover, the carriers are increasingly adopting an active surplus materials strategy to become less dependent on the OEMs. In the meantime, according to data, collected by Locatory.com, most industry players are still relying on traditional channels in spare parts trade-related processes. However, this also means remaining blind to new opportunities.
In a market as competitive as aviation, it is obvious that a spare parts trading business has to be especially focused on keeping the margins high enough or making the operations as LEAN as possible. However, according to Locatory.com‘s recent market analysis, while ensuring stable spare parts supply is about the only reliable means of avoiding much of the maintenance-related downtime, many traditional spare parts trade channels are still unable to meet the demand. In fact, when it comes to aviation inventory trade, even such companies as Lufthansa Systems, Aviall, Boeing, Delta Airlines and Volga-Dnepr Airlines are often forced to use various additional marketing services, as well as search for spare parts in online search engines.
“Being incapable of efficiently integrating online search engines in one’s inventory trade processes currently is one of the most obvious obstacles in bringing the aftermarket services to a new level. Nevertheless, while the importance of such solutions is widely recognized, many suppliers are simply unable to create their own online public catalogues, which would be both, up-to-date and visible to potential users via search engines. Moreover, as more and more users are searching for relevant information and spare parts via mobile devices, adoptability to such technologies is becoming a new problem to address,” comments Zilvinas Sadauskas, the CEO of Locatory.com.
