Engineering360: "Where Does Surplus Inventory Come From and What Happens to It?"

My pet peeve with the handling of surplus, is that it can easily get lost. Some customer had an original supplier, who then sold it, and no longer handles the link to where it went. So now, that customer has do another "roll-of-the-dice" search to find it again. With computers being more popular, maybe this won't be as big of a problem anymore. It's a shame to waste good inventory because of petty problems. A long time ago, there used to be a cross-reference "encyclopaedia" for car parts. You could look up "alternate" parts to use instead of the original unobtainable ones. That would be extremely handy for all "repairable" products. I think computers can handle that big of a data base, if anyone is up to doing it.