Recently I was an attendee at a webinar on the interaction between maintenance reliability and the storeroom. This was a free webinar that while free of cost was also free of content!
Unfortunately in this case what content was there was also downright misleading because one of their key points was the assertion that companies can use their record of items issued from the storeroom as a proxy for the mean time between failure (MTBF) in maintenance.
In my opinion, except in the most idealized of worlds, this idea is completely and utterly wrong! Please do not apply that advice.
Don’t take my word for it; just think about the two major storeroom related activities that prevent your issues data from accurately representing usage: Squirrel Stores and Returns to the Storeroom.
Squirrel stores I have discussed previously.
Today let’s address returns to store.
In the world of spare parts management for maintenance and operations support it is almost inevitable that some issued items are later returned to the storeroom. The two main reasons for this are:
- Maintenance people cannot always know in advance exactly how many of an item they will need.
- Knowing that they can easily return items, they will naturally take more than they need – just in case.
If you don’t ever track this, how much gets returned may actually surprise you. In recent years I have seen storerooms where returns by value have exceeded 40% of the issues. That means that, in dollar terms, for every 10 items removed, 4 get returned.
To be of any value for maintenance planning you would need to scrupulously track the specific items removed and used and those returned, taking into account that there is often quite a delay between the issue and the return.
Here are three actions that will help you improve reliability through managing returns to store:
- Control the process: don’t just allow reversal of earlier issues, record the actual return.
- Inspect the items returned: ensure that they are still of a fit and proper quality.
- Manage the high risk times (such as shutdowns with contractors on site): ensure that you don’t double-up your stock through new orders.
If you manage returns to store well, not only will your stock accuracy improve but so will your spare parts quality. And that leads to improved reliability.
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