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. As indicated last time, today […]
How Returns to Store Improves Reliability
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 […]
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 root cause analysis technique called […]
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. For example, Hobart […]
Repairable Spare Parts Decision Making
Recently I was helping a company develop a suite of spare parts management policies. The process for this involves reviewing the company’s existing policies and then working with their nominated team to improve these or develop new polices, using ‘tried and tested’ generic policies as the starting point. The Repairable Spare Parts Policy is one […]
The Pros and Cons of Bar Coding
Q: We are considering the installation of bar coding systems at our facilities. We will use the system for cycle counting, receiving and issues. Most of our sites are on board with the installation of bar coding system, except for one of our sites. They do not think the system will create value and is […]
Definitions of Different Inventory Fill Rates
Q: What is the difference between Order Fillrate (First Fillrate) and Service Fillrate? As an Inventory person which one should be important for me? A: In my experience the terms Order Fill rate, First Fill rate, and Service Fill rate are not universally defined. In many companies they can mean the same thing or even slightly […]
Three Questions For Better Spare Parts Management
Usually I use this forum to provide answers but this month I have decided to pose some questions. It’s up to you to determine the answers that will work best for you! Here are three questions to help you achieve better spare parts management by focusing on the actions that will make a real difference: What […]
Will an inventory turnover >1 be practical?
Q: I would like to take your opinion on the target for inventory turn over particularly for the industrial warehouse like ours, where around 80 to 85% of the materials stocked with us are maintenance spares /materials and many out of them are recommended by the OEM’s as 3-5 years or 5-10 years spares which […]
How do we measure reduction in consumption of MRO?
Q: A question I have is how do we measure reduction in consumption of MRO? It seems a highly problematic area (to me at least!). We have a complete data set of usage and spend for the past 12 months and are seeking to measure the impact of control systems we are putting in place. By […]