MRO items can be related to repair and maintenance of production machinery (lubes, valves, bearings, motors, coils), safety equipment, office supplies, janitorial supplies, laboratory supplies, spare parts, periodically replaceable items etc.

Large # SKU counts in MRO mean Inventory Management of MRO items have expensive trade-offs between capital tied in Inventory and demand (consumption forecast) characterized by high noise, coupled with low density of demand for a long tail of items. The demand generation function is hard to model using traditional forecasting methods like time series forecasting.

In addition,

Reorder points, quantities and order multiples based on historical analysis can quickly become irrelevant for replenishment planning.

However expected service levels for requirement of such items are often high as it directly impacts manufacturing operations. This can imply high buffer stocks or frequent manual ordering of products needing much effort in creating purchase/transfer requisitions and orders in the ERP systems

The price of the item is generally not a driver of the demand for such items