Spare Parts Management Resources – The Know-How Center

 
It is vital that the people engaged in establishing your system understand spare parts management, not just supply chain or generic inventory management.

The other key considerations in the phase are: understanding the financial implications, developing polices and processes that provide the framework for action, and establishing robust parts identification systems.

In addition, an understanding fo best practices will help ensure that you are working from established practices that deliver the best outcomes.

Key topic ares include:

• Understanding Spare Parts Management
• Financial Considerations
• Metrics and Reporting
• Policies and Procedures
• Parts Identification
• Best Practices

It is these decisions that determine if you have the stock that you need and how much money you spend on your inventory. It is in this phase of the life cycle that a company has the greatest influence on its spare parts inventory, and getting these questions “right” for your circumstance makes everything else that follows that much easier (but not necessarily easy!).

What is most curious about this phase is how few companies have properly developed guidelines on the process and tools to make these decisions. These should be elements of the policies established as part of your spare parts management system.

The problem is that, too often, when there is a policy, the guidelines are vague or nonspecific. For example, they may suggest the collection of appropriate data such as usage and lead time, which is a good start, but then provide no guidance on what to do with this information, that is, how to actually make the stock-holding decision. The intent is right, but the guidance on execution lets it down.

In this section of the spare parts management resources library there is definitive guidance on how to set both the reorder point and the reorder quantity, using a technique that can be applied on a daily basis with little or no software.

Key topic areas include:

• Deciding What to Stock
• Spare Parts Standardization
• Capital Equipment and First Time Buy
• Identifying and Managing Critical Spares
• Setting the Re-Order Point and Re-Order Quantity

 

While the decision to create an item and stock it in the inventory may be made in minutes, the item can then be part of the inventory for years or even decades.

During this time, for most spare parts, the item (and the storeroom team) can be involved in a huge range of activities. Accordingly, this is the largest section of our library.

Key topic areas include:

• Forecasting
• Inventory Optimization
• Inventory Optimization: The Inventory Cash Release Process
• Inventory Optimization: Reliability Centered Spares
• The Optimization Trap
• Case Studies
• Managing Repairable Spares
• Storeroom Management
• Data Management and Cleansing
• Inventory Accuracy
• Conducting Stock Takes
• Bar Coding
• Integrating Maintenance and Spare Parts Management
• Bills of Material
• Spare Parts Procurement

 

This section addresses the final phase of the life cycle by discussing end-of-life management, the last-time buy, the management of obsolescence, and the options for spare parts disposal.

Key topic areas include:

• Managing Obsolescence, End of Life, and Last Time Buy
• Spare Parts Disposal

 

Key topic ares include:

• Implementation
• Continuous Improvement
• Change Management