The Knowledge Transfer Partnership

A Knowledge Transfer Partnership to improve inventory decision-making

Jaguar Land Rover worked with Lancaster University Management School on a Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) created to design, test and implement innovative statistical and machine learning models to improve forecasting and inventory control for spare parts. The KTP project helped the company to reduce economic and environmental waste, while maintaining a satisfactory level of customer service.

KTP Associate, Dr Maren Dangut, worked with the team at Jaguar Land Rover and Dr Anna-Lena Sachs, Professor Adam Letchford and the late Professor John Boylan in the Department of Management Science at Lancaster University Management School.

The Project

Jaguar Land Rover offers a comprehensive after-sales service to its customers, aspiring to make spare parts available to vehicle owners for at least ten years after a vehicle has gone out of production. This leads to large-scale and complex forecasting and inventory control problems, with thousands of parts under consideration at any given time.

The KTP helped Jaguar Land Rover leverage cutting-edge statistical and machine learning methods, to produce more accurate forecasts of the long-term demand for spare parts, and then use those forecasts to determine order quantities in their inventory control system. The resulting system is expected to bring several benefits, such as savings in ordering and stockholding costs, reduced environmental waste, and improved customer satisfaction.