Too Many Control Tower Alerts Leave Service Parts Teams Reacting to Stockouts

Control towers that manage service parts networks are generating more alerts than planning teams can work through, and most corrective action still happens after a part has stocked out, according to an October 2026 industry research report from Unilog.SC, a fourth-party logistics provider based in Lynbrook, N.Y.

Four of five equipment makers surveyed for the report received between 300 and 2,000 control tower alerts a week. Between 15% and 50% of those alerts were judged high priority. Reconciling plans with actual conditions took 40% to 90% of planning teams’ time. The report finds that alerts are generated automatically while responses are handled by hand, which leaves teams reacting once a shortage has already occurred.

The report describes service parts as items that typically move fewer than five times a year, cost more than $1,000 each and are stocked near customer sites under service contracts that set response times in hours.

All five companies whose intervention patterns were reviewed relied heavily on expediting parts from a central warehouse after a stockout. Only one of the five made extensive use of interventions before a stockout.

To test which actions affect service levels, Unilog.SC simulated the service parts network of a global IT hardware company with a same-day fill rate near 95%. Transferring parts between local warehouses ahead of a shortage raised same-day fill rates by about 3 points. Shipping parts early from the central warehouse raised them by about 4%. Expediting repairs and reserving stock for premium customers produced no improvement. About 30% of the local warehouse transfers accounted for 80% of the gain. The report attributes the result to proximity: actions taken upstream left too many steps between the decision and the customer.

The report also found that notifying purchasing as soon as a failed part goes unreturned or cannot be repaired started replacement orders sooner and improved fill rates at negligible cost.

Alert prioritization is a separate gap. Service contracts are written at the customer and system level, but planning decisions are made one part at a time, so a standard alert does not show which customer has already used most of its quarterly downtime allowance. “The control tower sees everything and treats every alert the same,” said Eyal Yossef, vice president of supply chain solutions at Unilog.SC.

The report catalogs ten common service parts exceptions with a recommended first action for each, among them forward stocking locations at risk of running out before replenishment arrives, customs holds on cross-border transfers and customers nearing contract limits. As starting points, it recommends that planning teams compare last week’s alerts with the ones planners actually opened, sort last month’s interventions into those made before and after a stockout, rank alerts by contract risk, connect the return and repair loop to purchasing, and automate decisions for low-cost, fast-moving parts.

Cross-border rules limit the transfers the simulation found most effective. The nearest stocking location is often in another country, so moving a part between warehouses becomes a customs entry that needs an importer of record and clearance time. The report says that determines whether a transfer arrives in time to meet a customer commitment.