Q: What information can you provide on benchmark figures for warehouse in industrial industries to assist us in setting up our KPI targets. We are reporting on stock accuracy against volume and stock accuracy against value (via stock-check). As well as warehouse stock-turn (goods issued/ave warehouse inventory for the last 12 months)? A: In my […]
Which Items Should be Catalogued?
Q: At a high level, what are your thoughts on what ‘should’ be catalogued within an inventory system. Obviously all relevant spare parts that have/require a BoM’s connection are a given, but where do you draw the line on consumable type items. By value? By purchasing frequency? Particularly if these are non-stock the questions of […]
Rationalizing Inventory With Multiple Locations
Q: One thing I’d be interested in knowing more about is rationalizing inventory. To elaborate, what I’m interested in knowing more about is how companies that have multiple locations in a region are able to take spares that are carried at each location and rationalize (or store at one location) to share amongst all the […]
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 seems that in most ERP […]
MRO Definition (Plus Materials, and Spare Parts)
Here is a useful and practical MRO definition that identifies MRO separately from materials and spare parts. Often people refer in books, magazines, blogs, presentations and so on to MRO, materials, and spare parts; but what do these individual terms really mean? And does it really matter? This is the official SparePartsKnowHow.com MRO definition and a […]
Who is Phillip Slater?
That’s a fair question. After all if you are going to join SparePartsKnowHow.com for online training and information then you want to know who Phillip Slater is and why this website will work for you. Let’s face it, there is plenty of material on inventory management out there on the Internet, some of it good […]
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 association and presented the award. […]
MRP Definition
Is the technique known as Materials Resource Planning misunderstood? Well, in the world of materials and spare parts management for maintenance support I certainly think that it is. Here is our MRP definition: Materials Resource Planning (MRP) is a management technique that is used to control the resources and activities required […]
Why MRO and Spare Parts Inventory Management Is Different to Other Inventory
Subject Area: MRO and Spare Parts Inventory The Root Cause of MRO and Spare Parts Inventory Management Problems While each department blames another for this problem the real issue is that they haven’t recognized the root cause: MRO and spare parts inventories are fundamentally different to other inventory types. This means that many of […]
Supply Chain Management Definition
APICS, The Association for Operations Management uses the following Supply Chain Management definition: ‘design, planning, execution, control, and monitoring of supply chain activities with the objective of creating net value, building a competitive infrastructure, leveraging worldwide logistics, synchronizing supply with demand and measuring performance globally.’ That’s quite a mouthful and many people think supply chain management […]