Those of you who have been reading my blog posts for some time will know that squirrel stores are one of my ‘hot buttons’ when it comes to spare parts management best practice. (For those not familiar with the term ‘squirrel stores’, it refers to those unauthorized, uncontrolled […]
Stop Being Incremental with Spare Parts Management
There is an old management maxim that says that ‘the good is the enemy of the great’. The way that I interpret this expression is that make real progress with their spare parts inventory management companies need to stop being incremental. This is because incremental activity makes us feel like we are making progress with […]
Spare Parts Management Best Practice #4: Develop Clear ROP & ROQ Logic and Guidelines
Spare Parts Managment Best Practice #3 required that you develop your stock/don’t stock criteria – that is deciding whether or not to stock an item. Now, for best practice #4 you need to be clear about how to decide how many to stock and how many to […]
Spare Parts Management Best Practice #3: Define Your Stock/Don’t Stock Criteria
We have all been there: you are deciding whether or not to stock a spare part and the first thought that pops into your head is, ‘just in case’. After all, you don’t want to be the person that lets the team down by not stocking something […]
Spare Parts Management Best Practice #2: Regular Reviews
One of the major problems with spare parts management is the attitude of ‘set and forget’. You know this situation: at some point in the past the holding levels for an item were set and they have not been reviewed since… …unless, of course, you have had […]
Spare Parts Management Best Practice #1: Create Transparency
In short, this best practice requires that you create transparency in your spare parts inventory management through the use of classifications, metrics and reporting. Transparency enables you to see what is happening with different types of inventory, with the value, and with the volumes of inventory. And […]
Defining Best Practice for Spare Parts Management
Defining best practice for spare parts management can be tough. In fact, our recent research identified that, among the people that manage spare parts inventory, very little is known about best practices – that is, what top performers do better than others, what to focus on for better results and […]
Spare Parts Inventory Management Secrets
Subject Area: Spare Parts Inventory Management Secrets The Reality of Spare Parts Inventory Management One of the little acknowledged issues with spare parts inventory management is that for many companies they really don’t know what they have and/or why they have it. How can that be you ask. Don’t most companies use some kind […]
The Spare Parts Management KPI Self-Delusion
Should any spare parts management metric be treated as a spare parts management KPI? Does your company suffer from the spare parts management KPI delusion? There is an old saying that ‘what is measured, matters’ and while there are some companies that don’t actually measure their performance through spare parts KPIs (yes, really) the vast […]
Isn’t It Time That We Started Talking About Inventory Prevention?
If the goal really is spare parts inventory optimization, then surely doing the work after the parts have been purchased is just wrong. Shouldn’t we be taking action before the parts are purchased? Shouldn’t we be talking about inventory prevention? Spare parts inventory optimization is great. It helps companies identify where they are holding […]