As I write this it is early January 2016 and my inbox is awash with advice on goal setting. There are articles, podcasts and webinars all aiming to tell me how to set attainable goals for 2016. Unfortunately, most of this advice misses out on the two issues that are required for goal setting to actually achieve something.
Most goal setting advice follows, in one way or another, the well known SMART formula. That is, that goals need to be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time-related. All good stuff.
But let’s ask ourselves why goals are not achieved. Why is it that millions of people around the world won’t lose weight, get fit or give up smoking? Its not that their goals aren’t SMART. Something else is missing.
Its the same with spare parts inventory management goals. This year, companies all over the world will fail to optimize their inventory, improve their stock accuracy, reduce stock outs, or increase spare parts availability in a cost effective way. Just like personal goals, these goals can all be written in a S.M.A.R.T way but still are not achieved.
Identify the Goal Setting Why and How
So what is missing?
The ‘why’ and the ‘how’.
Let’s start with the ‘why’. Tell most maintenance people that your goal is to optimize the spare parts inventory and you will be met with a response along the lines that this is purely a short-sighted accounting exercise aimed at cutting costs without understanding real world operational dynamics. (I bet everyone that just read that sentence is now smiling at the truth of it!)
But help them to see that past decisions have left the company with poorly defined criticality and a lack of planning/scheduling/spare parts/procurement integration that has led to downtime, maintenance frustration, excessive holdings of some items, and understocks of others, and you start to get their engagement. And make no mistake, trying to optimize spare parts inventories without the input of the users is like trying to make ice cream without milk and cream. It might look similar but it doesn’t taste the same!
Read the rest of this article to find out more, including a case study. Follow this link.
Keep on improving,
Phillip Slater
Founder, SparePartsKnowHow.com
