The Cost of Poor Quality Spare Parts Data

Spare parts are the foundation of many asset-intensive businesses. They can affect operations in multiple ways at every level. With this in mind, knowing what costs the spare parts in your EAM system may be creating for your business is critical to understanding how to best manage them. If you intend to take on a materials cleansing project, this kind of information can inform key decisions about how you approach your cleanse. In our recent blogs, we’ve mentioned how prioritizing the resolution of specific issues caused by poor quality spare parts data is the best way to most effectively optimize the day to day operations of your business. Whether you’re overspending on time, money, or both, below is a list of costly problem-areas which may be significant focus points for your cleansing project.

Problems to consider prioritizing during your spare parts data cleanse

Overspending on inefficient maintenance processes: Do you still use cumbersome paper-based processes to manage your spare parts data? Are you frequently behind schedule on work orders or other maintenance processes because workers struggle to find reliable spare parts information? Do you find that your business’ productivity and revenue is suffering because of these issues? A cleanse is an opportunity to be rid of the inaccurate, duplicate, or obsolete data that slows workers down and implement modern and more effective solutions to help you manage your maintenance processes.

Overspending on building BoMs: Are your bills of materials created using ineffective spreadsheets? Do you spend too much on third-party contractors who build your BoMs using inefficient solutions? A cleanse can reduce these costs by implementing a more user-friendly and efficient solution, reducing the need for inefficient spreadsheets and contractors. This will improve the quality of your BoMs and keep them that way in the long term.

Overspending on spare parts: Does your purchasing department make costly errors when ordering replacement parts, like ordering the wrong replacement, or ordering in excess? Are the lead times of certain spare parts misunderstood in a way that leads to costly delays in replacements and operations? Do you feel like your business overspends on spare parts and struggles to find cheap yet reliable sources for replacements? A spare parts cleanse allows you to correct the inaccurate data that leads to such costly errors and really familiarize yourself with the information in your EAM system, enabling you to make more informed purchasing decisions and strategically source spare parts from affordable vendors.

Make a successful cleanse your number one priority

The root cause of the problems listed above is poor quality spare parts data that is unreliable and inaccurate, leaving a poor foundation of knowledge for those making important actions and decisions related to that data.  Because spare parts form the foundation of an asset-intensive business, they can cause a ripple effect of issues that go beyond the problems listed above. However, we recommend focusing on a smaller number of problems and prioritizing their improvement, rather than attempting to fix every issue caused by poor quality spare parts data at once. If you’d like to learn more about the problems that a materials cleansing solution can solve, click on one of our resources below, or book a demo with us to see how NRX AssetHub can help you with your next cleanse!