Efficient Plant Nov./Dec. 2021 - 24

MRO solutions
Lean is Key
To Storeroom
Management
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IDENTIFY CRITICAL SPARES
The first step to keeping your storeroom lean is to identify
critical spares, or the parts deemed crucial to avoiding production
or plant downtimes. By identifying/prioritizing these parts
and keeping them in ready supply, you can ensure you become
lean without sacrificing efficiency. Note that marking all spares
as critical is not a strategy. That approach leads to even more
inventory issues.
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This first step toward establishing a lean storeroom is to identify spare parts that
are absolutely critical to plant-system operation.
GOING LEAN WITH your MRO storeroom inventory is more difficult
than it may seem. When done correctly it can lower carrying costs and
create more-efficient maintenance operations. The steps your company
takes to get there go a long way toward determining how efficient your
entire MRO supply chain can become.
In a typical company-operated MRO storeroom, approximately 90%
of all parts account for about 6% of inventory value. Most parts are either
obsolete or duplicates for " just-in-case " scenarios that rarely occur. Keeping
those parts in your storeroom is inefficient and costly, which is why an
effective inventory-management strategy is so important.
Eliminating excess inventory moves your organization closer to becoming
truly lean while freeing up cash and creating storeroom space that
improves traffic flow and promotes safety. Once you are free of unnecessary
spare parts and your storeroom is streamlined, develop a strategy to
keep inventory lean so your costs and time can be more effectively managed.
Here are three ways to stay lean.
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PREDICTIVE INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
Examine historical ordering and maintenance data to identify
trends and insights that help predict MRO demand. Determine
the optimal number of each part to stock. Establishing
minimum and maximum numbers of parts ensures you always
have what you need, without the costliness of storing what's not
needed.
CONDITION MONITORING
The next-wave method of predictive inventory management
comes from gleaning predictions not just from historical data,
but real-time condition monitoring of assets. Monitoring raises
an alert when maintenance or a spare part need is imminent and
automatically triggers an order so that maintenance becomes
proactive instead of reactive, eliminating downtime altogether.
CONSIDER PARTNERING WITH AN
MRO EXPERT
Managing a storeroom is no small task. If the professionals
managing your storeroom have other job responsibilities, it
may be hard for them to identify key areas that save money and
improve processes. That's not a detriment to them. They simply
may not have the experience of running a storeroom 24/7. An
MRO supply-chain service provider uses its buying leverage to
save on material costs, while applying a high level of expertise
to storeroom operations and processes, leading to greater
savings and organizational efficiencies across the board.
For more information about MRO solutions, visit synovos.com.
24 | EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM
Taking these steps increases the likelihood that your storeroom
will be lean (but not so mean). After all, lowering costs and
increasing efficiencies should make everyone, including plant
management, happy. EP
-Diane Caldwell, Senior Director of Project Management,
Synovos Inc., dcaldwell@synovos.com.
NOV/DEC 2021
http://www.synovos.com http://www.EFFICIENTPLANTMAG.COM
Efficient Plant Nov./Dec. 2021

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