Spare Parts Inventory Management Is a Complex Topic
Spare parts inventory management involves many participants from different parts of the company. The lack of communication between them may result in information gaps filled with uncertainty on major points as availability, stock outs, logistics and many more. Very often the current stock status is managed via an ERP, from which most likely only the purchasing department is able to extract and analyze some data.
Furthermore, these components carry specific characteristics. Some of them are frequently used and should be renewed often, others can be employed for a longer time, but if they break they have to be replaced in a very short time. So, how to know then what spare parts quantity will suit plant’s needs? And when is the right moment to order which part? It complicates even more the already difficult to achieve balance between costs and service quality.
For a maintenance department, a bad management can result in additional costs on purchasing parts in the last moment to prevent profit-inhibiting downtime and loss of productions. To streamline this process and turn it into a smoothly running system you can simply plan it in Mobility Work CMMS.
How to Manage your spart parts inventory?
Integrating your inventory into Mobility Work CMMS software will help your maintenance team to easier carry out the Japanese-based “5S” methodology for lean manufacturing. The main objectives of Mobility Work are:
- To remove the duplicate references for a same spare part;
- To eliminate dead stock;
- To minimize surplus stock;
- To standardize the labeling of all spare parts and create nomenclatures;
- To classify all spare parts related to a piece of equipment.
All these actions require a very good knowledge of every single piece of equipment and can be accomplished only if the purchasing team is fully integrated.
Mobility Work’s analytics tool forecasts are based on data collected from thousands of users working on the same equipment.
Advantages of maintenance software for Spare parts Management
Find quickly and easily the right part
The right spare part can be easily found and immediately prepared for the next maintenance task. This results in increased rapidity of the performed curative interventions and decreased MTTR (Mean time to repair).
Optimize parts supply
Mobility Work enables maintenance teams to establish regular follow-ups on all used spare parts and then accordingly optimize the supply by using the equipment calendar.
Enhance communication between the different teams
Mobility Work is accessible anytime and anywhere from any smart device. Purchasing, maintenance and production teams are constantly connected and can easily coordinate their actions.
Save Time and Cost
Mobility Work saves time for technicians, helps them to perform efficiently all scheduled maintenance tasks and allows them to intervene immediately if an unplanned breakdown occurs. Furthermore, a smart stock management eliminates all unnecessary cost for unplanned or badly planned spare parts purchase.
How to enter Your Inventory into your software?
1. Perform an extraction of all the equipment of your ERP.
2. Sort all parts according to:
- Critical or important parts (engine, geared motor, large equipment such ventilator etc.)
- Maintenance tools
- Parts for portable and pneumatic portable equipment
- PPE (personal protective equipment): masks, gloves, suit, etc.
- Parts that have been deleted but remained in the ERP database
- Electrical equipment
- Bearings, seal, chain, grease etc
It is essential to define a good naming strategy in order to find them very easily in Mobility Work.
The most important is to associate the purchasing, technical and production nomenclature in a single title.
Access all documents (photos, videos, etc.) and checklists from the equipment sheet in your Mobility Work application
For example:
The store reference type, in this case P70703208 is the most important information for the purchasing department.
The relevant information for the technical department (maintenance team) includes the name of the parts with its main characteristics, the name of the manufacturer, the manufacturer’s reference and the name of the equipment to which this part is attached: “Self-aligning two-row ball bearing with tapered bore SKF 2310 KC3 – Bearing plate – Retaining screw n ° 1 – Filter Lürh Housing 1 & 2 – 2 X DWF 3,0 / 6,5 / 2,3 / 73/78 – Merger”.
The number of the equipment to which this spare part is attached, in this case “N ° 685” eases the work of the production team (team leader, sector manager, etc.).
The final name of this part will appear as: “P70703208 – Self-aligning ball bearing with tapered bore SKF 2310 KC3 – Bearing plate – Retaining screw n ° 1 – Filter Lürh Housing 1 & 2 – 2 X DWF 3,0 / 6,5 / 2,3 / 73/78 – Fusion – No. 685”
Following this example all parts can be named, entered into XLS and then transferred to Mobility Work. Every single part of the spare part name can be used as a search keyword. This is the easiest and fastest way to identify all the spare parts attached to a piece of equipment or simply to look for a part by the name or the reference of the manufacturer.
The maintenance team of FMGC (a French foundry using Mobility Work) has already registered 1/3 of the company’s pieces into Mobility Work. According to their maintenance manager, Anthony Blanchard, the company saved 80K €, easily calculated with Mobility Work’s analytical tool.
Smart spare parts management has a lot to do with finding the balance between always having the right amount of all critical parts in stock while keeping your inventory value as low as possible. Mobility Work CMMS software analytical tool helps you measure trends and decide which parts are of high priority and which ones should be downgraded, as they are no longer critical to maintenance.
