Excess inventory: What is the real cost of not reviewing your inventory management processes? That’s right I said the cost of NOT reviewing your inventory. Usually when people (me included) raise the topic of the cost of inventory we talk about the financing and management costs of holding inventory. However,
Why Your Inventory Management Software Gives You The Wrong Answer
Many of my clients get quite frustrated with their inventory management software – especially the type of software that they use to calculate ‘optimal’ holding levels. What they tell me is that they typically and frequently get from their software crazy numbers that just don’t make sense. In fact, it
Phillip Slater Wins National Logistics Leadership Award
Leadership in Logistics Education Award In 2012 the Logistics Association of Australia announced Phillip Slater as that year’s winner of the Kim Rothwell Leadership in Logistics Education Award. Phillip Slater is a spare parts management specialist, consultant, author, and Founder of SparePartsKnowHow.com. Kim Rothwell, is a life member of the
Why MRO and Spare Parts Inventory Management Is Different to Other Inventory
Subject Area: MRO and Spare Parts Inventory MRO and spare parts inventory management is different so is it any wonder why you can’t seem to get your MRO and spare parts inventory consistently under control while other inventory types appear to be well managed? Are you challenged by the spare
Excess Spare Parts Inventory: Deal With It
One of the issues that arise with spare parts management in every industry is the management of excess inventory. This is particularly so with engineering spares, used to provide operational support to maintenance and production. With these spare parts there is often a high number of items that are used
How Squirrel Stores Wreck Your Data
Recently I wrote about the two major storeroom activities that prevent your issues data from accurately representing actual usage. The first of these was the returns-to-store process and you will recall that, despite the impact on your data, if managed well this process can actually help you improve your reliability.
The Two Whys of Spare Parts Inventory Management
The Toyota Production System is seen by many as the origin of Lean Manufacturing – an approach to operations management that eliminates waste and as the name suggests aims to operate as lean as possible. According to Taiicho Ohno, the creator of the system, the approach was built upon a
The Truth About Long Supply Chains
Recently I visited a company located near Hobart, in Tasmania. Hobart is the southern most capital city in Australia and possibly the world. One of the interesting things about Hobart (from a spare parts inventory perspective) is that it is a long way away from many industrial centres that supply
Spare Parts Criticality
How do you determine spare parts criticality? Most companies don’t really understand criticality and see it as a single dimension issue. But that is just not right. For access to this post, and all of our content, join using the button below. If you are
Calculating Spare Parts Stock Levels
Do you hold the right levels of spare parts? Have you done the right analysis? These are two questions that keep maintenance and reliability engineers awake at night. Determining which approach to use for calculating reorder points and reorder quantities is the easy part of this dilemma. The hard part