Spare Parts Management is one of the key processes which support effective maintenance planning, scheduling and equipment reliability improvement. The effective management of spare parts enables companies to maintain productivity/service levels, reduce equipment downtime, minimise excess inventory and reduce supply chain costs.

 

Spare parts are often described as having irregular demand patterns with periods of no demand mixed with sudden demand spikes. Additionally, there may be disproportionally high costs associated with sourcing critical spare parts when needed urgently. Companies are therefore challenged to manage their spare parts inventory effectively to avoid unnecessary costs.

 

On the one hand, it is necessary for the required spare parts to be available when needed for routine maintenance and repairs to avoid prolonged expensive downtime; on the other hand, when too many spare parts are in stock, cash flow is unduly tied up and obsolete stock can ensue.

 

Nowadays, it is reasonable to assume that most manufacturing companies whether small, medium or large will have some form of CMMS in place. However the CMMS functionality will vary greatly from one vendor to the next. A robust CMMS such a PEMAC Maintenance with its comprehensive engineering spares module will enable you to support your preventative maintenance strategy by automatically linking spare parts to the assets on which they are used.

 

PEMAC Maintenance also allows you to identify universal spares, track the cost of repair and prioritise the ordering of spare parts that are actually being used. Concepts like Cycle Counting can greatly enhance the control you have over engineering stores but key to this is tracking spares as the leave the store. 

 

This key obstacle remains: How do you control and monitor the logging of spare parts which leave the store room?                                         

 

Although spare parts management is of fundamental importance to most businesses, when an equipment breakdown occurs the top priority for maintenance or engineering personnel is to fix the problem in order to minimise downtime and loss of productivity. Subsequently, spare parts management becomes a secondary concern and often the essential spare parts required for the fix are taken from the store room without being recorded.

 

As the logging of a spare part may consist of completing lengthy documentation or waiting for a computer to load up, personnel often note the product number on a piece of paper with the intention of logging this on the CMMS at a later stage when the equipment is up and running. Often this fails to happen or is forgotten. When spares are presenting on the CMMS as ‘in-stock’ but are not available when required, breakdowns become lengthy and expensive. The need to source essential parts in an urgent and therefore more expensive manner is tolerated, so too is the desire to stop the symptom from recurring. The most common way to do this is to overstock but this increases the company’s cost base and merely hides the problem of demand management for another day. 

 

PEMAC Stock Control handheld enables users to control, monitor and log spare parts using a mobile device. This handheld device eliminates the risk associated with the ‘fix the equipment now, log the spare part later’ culture which can too easily become the norm. The PEMAC Stock Control handheld can be positioned in the store room where maintenance or engineering personnel can use it to quickly scan a spare part’s barcode and link the spare to the asset it is being used on, then proceed to fix the equipment.

 

The device saves time, removes room for error and lengthy paperwork and helps establish best practice. The Handheld device feeds information back to the CMMS, ensuring stock levels are accurate and spare parts usage patterns are identified and used for reordering purposes. More importantly it correctly allocates the cost of repair to the right asset and provides data to prompt demand driven reordering.

 

PEMAC Stock Control Handheld ensures the availability of vital spare parts in a multi-site and multi-store setting. It enables the use of like-for-like spare parts when appropriate to maintain compliance. Companies can also use the PEMAC Stores Control Handheld to manage suppliers and reorder levels, pinpoint bin locations, issue or receive spare parts, and to complete stock takes.

 

Using the PEMAC Stock Control Handheld, a large food company moved from a 60% accuracy level in spare parts management to 99.7% within a two year period. PMI Software says that often the benefits far exceed just this.