Over the past few months I have been working through a series of five best practices for spare parts management. If you missed any of those items you can catch up via the links below.
But there is one thing that you must do if you want to take advantage of applying the practices covered so far. Let’s call this one the unofficial best practice #6.
The Unofficial Best Practice #6: Do Not Cherry Pick Solutions
Cherry Picking can be described as ‘the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position’.
In other words, including only the data that suits you and ignoring the rest.
In the case of our five practices its not so much about ignoring data but ignoring the practices that don’t suit you and then thinking that you can still achieve a best practice outcome. This is what I mean when I say do not cherry pick solutions.
If you really want to achieve top level spare parts management results you need to sincerely apply all of the five practices not just choose the 1, 2 or 3 that suit you or that you think are easy to implement.
For example, imagine having a system that ignores Practice #1: Create Transparency. You would have a system without genuine measures and reporting. This would mean that you wouldn’t know or understand the situation with different classifications of inventory. You would not have genuine control of your inventory.
What if you ignore Practice #3 or #4? You would be stuck with ad hoc decision-making, lacking in consistency and your spare parts inventory will be dictated by the mood of whomever makes the decision on any given day. Also, you will not be able to audit any decisions because there are no criteria against which to conduct an audit. Not a good way to run any part of your business.
Finally, imagine ignoring Practice #5: Eliminating Squirrel Stores. In this case you can kiss goodbye any genuine attempt at achieving operational reliability.
If any of the above scenarios describe yoru spare parts management then you need to take action – today!
Generally people think of these practices as being individual and stand-alone but with spare parts management there really is a suite of practices that you must apply in a coordinated manner if you really want to achieve best practice spare parts management.
Ignore the unofficial best practice #6 at your peril.
Follow these links to read about each best practice:
- How we defined Best Practice
- Best Practice #1
- Best Practice #2
- Best Practice #3
- Best Practice #4
- Best Practice #5
Mastery members can also access a video explaining all of these best practices plus related policy documentation in the How-To Center.