Managing spare parts for OEMs and MROs is no easy feat. Maintaining legacy equipment and machinery often means tying up capital in large quantities of slow-moving parts while incurring high warehousing costs to avoid costly downtime or long production lead times. Despite careful monitoring and forecasting, companies often struggle with procuring spare parts for maintenance.
Spare parts management plays a critical role in equipment operation – it's essential to maintenance because it enables businesses to keep their equipment running efficiently, reduce downtime, and minimize repair costs. However, managing spare parts can be daunting, especially for businesses with large inventories of legacy equipment and machinery.
In this article, we will discuss some best practices that businesses can use to improve their spare parts management for maintenance.
6 Tactics for Improving Spare Parts Management for Maintenance
Implement an Inventory Management System
An inventory management system is a technical solution that enables businesses to track their spare parts inventory. This system can provide real-time visibility into the stock levels of different parts, the location of those parts, and the frequency of their usage. By using an inventory management system, businesses can reduce the time and resources required to manually manage their spare parts inventory.
Categorize Your Spare Parts
Categorizing spare parts involves grouping similar parts together based on their attributes, such as size, function, manufacturer, etc. This practice helps businesses quickly find the parts they need when needed, reducing the equipment's downtime. Categorizing parts is also helpful for identifying parts that are no longer needed and which parts offer valuable on-demand manufacturing use cases. By identifying parts suitable for on-demand manufacturing, businesses can reduce warehousing costs and free up capital that would normally be locked in overstock for slow-moving parts.
Prioritize Which Parts Should be Reengineered for On-Demand
If a manufacturer has gone out of business or no longer produces a part, finding a replacement supplier capable of remanufacturing parts requires significant production lead time. For this reason, creating a priority list of parts that can be produced via 3D printing is critical. 3D printing can produce parts using complex structures like lattices to reduce weight, improve part performance, and can be produced on-demand, reducing order and production lead times.
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