Tips for Effective Spare Parts Management

Effective spare parts management can save asset-intensive companies money while ensuring operations run smoothly. However, many asset-intensive organizations find themselves struggling to find and order spare parts efficiently. This can result in rushed orders where parts information is only tracked down at the last minute and in extreme scenarios, the unavailability of spare parts needed to complete work orders can result in unplanned downtime.

The following information provides some tips to help you improve your spare parts management and some guidance on how to implement them.

Build Solid Data

For your spare parts management to be effective, you need to be basing your decisions on ordering parts on accurate and complete spare parts data. Collaborating with your maintenance personnel and contractors to ensure that your EAM system contains high-quality materials data and will continue to be populated with accurate data is essential.

By validating your data with maintenance professionals, you can ensure that your data is complete, accurate, and fit for purpose. Reliable data simplifies your spare parts management, as employees will be able to choose the correct spare parts efficiently.

Use Illustrated Parts Catalogues and Bills of Materials (BoMs)

Building detailed BoMs that are connected to your procurement system helps with placing orders for parts, and accurate BoMs can help you with scheduled preventive maintenance. Although building BoMs for each piece of equipment can be time-consuming, it may be efficient to create BoMs for equipment that requires recurring parts orders. Even better than BoMs, are illustrated parts catalogues, which allow you to view vendor exploded parts diagrams so that planners can choose parts visually and maintenance personnel can identify parts accurately.

How Can You Ensure Your Spare Parts Management is Effective?

A materials cleanse can help you correct the inaccurate spare parts data that is leading to ineffective spare parts management and BoMs. A cleanse gives you the opportunity to review your parts’ descriptions and characteristics to ensure they are accurate, remove duplicate and obsolete parts, and standardize naming conventions and processes

Having a materials cleansing solution that enables your spare parts to be more easily searched and selected can make a big difference in saving your plant time and money. If you would like to learn more about how NRX AssetHub can help you optimize your spare parts management with a materials cleanse, book a demo, and our team would be happy to help you!