Topic Area: Spare Parts Management Foundations for Teams
a Team That Thinks Alike
Maintenance wants equipment available. Procurement manages supply. Stores manages inventory accuracy. Engineering influences specifications. Finance wants to control working capital.
Each group plays an important role in spare parts management. But when they operate with different assumptions, priorities, and decision-making practices, the results can be costly.
Excess inventory, inconsistent stocking decisions, unnecessary expediting, and poor availability are often symptoms of a deeper problem: the people making and influencing spare parts decisions are not working from the same understanding.
Foundations for Teams builds that shared understanding.
Led by spare parts specialist Phillip Slater, this facilitated online program helps your people develop common decision-making principles, understand their respective roles, and establish a stronger foundation for improving spare parts inventory performance.
Develop shared understanding. Improve decision consistency. Build the foundation for lasting improvement.
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More Consistent Spare Parts Decisions
Develop a shared understanding of how decisions about stocking, criticality, inventory levels, and obsolescence should be approached.
Better Cross-Functional Alignment
Help maintenance, procurement, engineering, stores, planning, and finance understand how their decisions influence each other and affect inventory performance.
Less Reliance on Individual Opinions
Replace inconsistent rules of thumb and local practices with a common understanding of spare parts management principles.
A Stronger Foundation for Improvement
Prepare your team to support inventory optimization, policy development, process changes, and other improvement initiatives.
The goal is not simply to increase individual knowledge. It is to improve how your people work together when making spare parts decisions.
Many spare parts problems cannot be solved by one person acting alone.
A maintenance planner may understand criticality, but procurement still needs to understand the implications for supply. A stores manager may recognize excess inventory, but engineering and maintenance must be involved in decisions about what can safely be removed.
Training one person can improve their decisions.
Developing a shared understanding across the team helps improve the way decisions are made and implemented throughout the organization.
That is why Foundations for Teams is designed as a facilitated group program rather than simply providing several people with access to online learning.
Participants work through common material, discuss its application, challenge assumptions, and develop a shared approach to spare parts management.
Your team will learn the core principles of spare parts management and why spare parts require different thinking.
The training helps participants understand:
- Why spare parts require different thinking from general inventory
- How to identify and manage critical spare parts
- How to calculate the Re-Order Point and Re-Order Quantity
- The best ways to prevent and manage obsolete inventory
- Approaches to managing the ‘First Time Buy’ and capital spares
- How maintenance, procurement, stores, engineering, and finance all influence spare parts outcomes
- What constitutes Best Practice with MRO and spare parts inventory management
- Why “rules of thumb” often create long-term inventory problems
- How to begin thinking in terms of structured decisions rather than isolated transactions
The goal is shared understanding, not just individual completion.
Foundations for Teams helps address problems such as:
- Different departments blaming each other for spare parts issues
- Maintenance requesting more stock without a structured decision process
- Procurement focusing only on purchase cost or supplier response
- Stores being blamed for issues caused by poor decisions upstream
- Finance seeing inventory value without understanding operational risk
- Inconsistent stocking decisions across sites, teams, or individuals
- Resistance to new policies or inventory improvement initiatives
- People using different language for the same problem
- Improvement projects losing momentum because the team does not share the same starting point
When everyone understands the basics, improvement becomes easier.
Facilitated online learning over five weeks
Foundations for Teams combines individual preparation with live online group sessions facilitated by Phillip Slater.
Individual Preparation
Participants complete selected reading, videos, and practical exercises before each group session.
Allow approximately 60–90 minutes per week.
Live Group Sessions
Regular interactive online sessions bring participants together to discuss the material, clarify understanding, and explore practical applications.
Sessions are facilitated by Phillip Slater, giving participants the opportunity to ask questions and draw on extensive specialist experience.
Practical Workbook
Participants receive a comprehensive workbook containing exercises and activities to support learning and the development of individual action plans.
Assessment and Recognition
Participants can receive recognition for program participation and have the opportunity to complete the Foundations assessment to demonstrate their understanding.
Follow-Up Review
A follow-up review, typically around three months after the program, provides an opportunity to consider progress toward the organization’s objectives and identify further development needs.
This is an intensive, instructor led, 100% online, group or team program that teaches participants the fundamentals of spare parts inventory management.
Spare parts management is a ‘team sport’.That is, it takes a team of people to produce effective results in terms of stock holding levels, availability, accuracy, and cost.
You can either assist them in working together or force them to work it out on their own.”
Foundations for Teams is designed to build shared understanding and alignment.
If your organization has a defined objective, such as reducing inventory investment, developing new stocking policies, or standardizing practices across multiple sites, a Targeted Improvement Program may be more appropriate.
These programs can incorporate Foundations for Teams alongside policy development, specialist tools, and implementation support.
Explore Targeted Improvement Programs >>
Foundations for Teams is delivered for organizational groups, with arrangements depending on participant numbers and delivery requirements.
We can discuss your current challenges, which functions should participate, and the most appropriate program structure.
Start by identifying the decisions your team needs to improve.
Ali Abrar
QAFCO
Khalid Majeed
Shandong Electric Power
Jason Ashby
The Shepherd Color Company
Is this the same as the individual Foundations Level?
It uses the same core Foundations content, but the delivery and purpose are fundamentally different. Foundations for Teams is a facilitated team alignment program, led by Phillip Slater, designed to help groups develop a shared understanding of spare parts decision-making.
Foundations for Teams builds shared understanding across the people who influence spare parts outcomes.
Who should be included?
Include the people who influence spare parts decisions or outcomes. This may include maintenance, stores, procurement, planning, reliability, engineering, supply chain, and finance.
Is this suitable before an improvement project?
Yes. It is an ideal first step before introducing new policies, reviewing inventory, improving critical spares, or changing spare parts processes.
Can this be delivered for multiple sites?
Yes. It is perfect for multiple sites because it is delivered online.
Alternatively, for multiple sites or larger groups, a tailored team or enterprise option may be more suitable.
Can selected people continue to Operations or Practitioner access?
Yes. A practical pathway is to train the broader team through Foundations for Teams, then provide Operations or Practitioner access to the people responsible for deeper improvement work.
Spare Parts Foundations for Teams Program is right for you.
This program is facilitated by: Phillip Slater