The objective was to maintain proper availability levels of parts while reducing investment in stock with using IMAFS.

1. Réseau de transport de la Capitale (RTC) offers regular public transit services in Quebec City
area and vehicules more than 155,000 different people every month. It has a fleet of about 600
standard, articulated, and midibus vehicules, including many that are hybrids and air-
conditioned. RTC offers more than 4,300 daily departures and has around 1,600 employees,
including 19 % in maintenance functions.
To support maintenance of its equipment, RTC has a catalog of more than 24,000 maintenance
parts.
Initial problem statement
In 2016, the Head Supply Chain Officer has given his team the challenge of maintaining good
availability levels of parts while reducing inventory investments. RTC had an inventory
optimization software, IMAFS, which was only used for 16% of the items.
Solution
The procurement team has mobilized itself to make more use of IMAFS functionalities and
exception lists to better optimize inventory. RTC has also asked IMAFS to improve certain
performance reports and to introduce the concept of maximum shelf in order to limit stocks
taking into account the available space in stores. These changes have contributed to increase
the willingness to make more use of IMAFS calculated Min Max.
Results
Between 2016 and 2019, RTC’s efforts have allowed to increase the percentage of parts
controlled by IMAFS from 16% to 67%. Supply Managers always involve Maintenance
Managers and Planners before putting parameters into automatic control. This operating mode
ensures full collaboration between maintenance staff and Inventory Managers.
During these same years, RTC had been able to maintain proper availability levels of parts
while reducing investment in stock by almost 14% on all items. This reduction amounts to 24% if
we consider only items with Min Max controlled by IMAFS. On the other hand, the inventory turn
increased from 2,5 turns in 2016 to more than 3,5 turns in 2019.
The emphasis was also placed on reducing obsolete inventories, that is to say, the inventory of
items of which we foresee little or no future consumption. The efforts have allowed of reducing
obsolete inventories by 36%.
All this has been achieved even if RTC bus trips have increased and that there were changes in
the fleet.
Users appreciate IMAFS’s features such as :
- The fact that IMAFS takes into account the seasonality of the demand, which ensures a
dynamic adjustment of Min Max as the season begins and ends. This avoids stockouts
at the beginning of the season and off-season surpluses.
- The fact that IMAFS takes into account the increase and the decrease of the demand for
items. The Min Max automatically adjusts downward when the demand decreases,
which, among other things, helps prevent obsolescence of parts.
- IMAFS forecasts are used by the buyers to prepare tenders. They also use forecasts by
product family to work with the Finance Department in terms of material budgets. This

2. way of working has allowed time saving. We also ask suppliers to maintain a stock
quickly available of class A items. IMAFS has become an indispensable tool in the
procurement of material.
- The flexibility of reports and exception lists.
- The fact that IMAFS identifies items whose forecast could cause problems, users can
then make a manual adjustment if required.
RTC staff enjoy working with the different functionalities of IMAFS. The ease of use of the
various tools available allows to obtain tangible results quickly and efficiently. The objectives
that the organization had set were able to be achieved and even exceeded, which has
resulted in substantial savings for RTC at all points of view.