Spare Parts Inventory Optimization - What's Stopping You?
What do you expect to achieve through a program of spare parts inventory optimization? Some of the typical answers to this question are:
• Improved availability of the required parts
• Reduced total spare parts investment
• Procurement savings
• Space savings
• Working capital savings
All worthy goals.
So if the benefits are both significant and achievable, what is stopping you from working on your spare parts inventory optimization today, right now, even as you get on with your daily tasks?
This question generates another list of common responses:
• Insufficient resources/time
• Data quality
• Incomplete or lack of Bills Of Materials (BOMs)
• Awaiting software approval from the IT department
These are all important issues but they should not be impediments to conducting a spare parts inventory optimization review.
Yes, it would be great if you had more resources and the luxury of time to do this work but realistically when does that ever really happen?
Sure great data will help identify parts and duplications but in 99%* of cases you will not have a true history of parts usage. Typically you will have an incomplete history of parts movements and that is a very different thing from usage.
Up to date and complete BOMs are great for maintenance but the information needed for spare parts inventory optimization is available without this.
Naturally you want the IT department to put evaluation of your requirements at the top of their list but you actually don’t need any special software to optimize your spare parts inventory.
So let’s be clear: you can conduct your spare parts inventory optimization review without any of this, if you choose the right process.
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