How much does it cost to your organization if the productive machine is not working as promised? It could be very costly and expensive to the organization and deteriorate the level of customer satisfaction and may severely impact your organization bottom line.
Hence, effective spare parts inventory management plays a vital role in achieving good machine and asset availability at an optimum cost.
It has been common in many industries that the non-availability or inappropriate of spare parts, as and when required for repairs, contributes to as much as 50% of the total down time cost. It is a paradox to note that the maintenance department is complaining of lacking of appropriate, right quantity of the spare parts to meet their maintenance requirement and finance department is facing the problem of increasing locked up capital in spare parts inventory due to over stocking or spare parts obsolescence. This further signifies the vital importance of spare parts inventory management in many organizations.
The typical problems and major challenges faced by the organization in managing their spare parts are as follows:-
Firstly, there is an element of uncertainty as to when, what and quantity a part is required. This is due to the fact that the failure of a component can not be predicted accurately.
Secondly, spare parts are not easily and widely available in the market as they are not fast moving or commodity items. Additionally, due to technology advancement, new spare parts are introduced to incorporate the design improvements and old spare parts are phased out. Obsolescence is the common problem due to old spare parts is not fitted.
Thirdly, the number and variety of spare parts are too large making the close control more and more tedious and difficult without the installing of good and proper inventory tracking system.
Fourthly, no proper spare parts inventory analysis tool in place to carry out analyze on different characteristics of the spare parts, such as annual consumption value, criticality, lead time, unit cost and the frequency of use; It is crucial to help the company in establishing suitable control policies.
The objective of spare parts inventory management is to ensure the availability of spares for maintenance and repairs of the plant and machinery as and when required at an optimum cost.
Chronos eStockcard, a good inventory control system helps to streamline spare part inventory control processes by deliver and render the following capabilities:-
- History of spare parts usage
- Good control and recording of spare parts IN and OUT
- Good control in obsolescence by proper configuring shelf life
- Spare parts trace-ability by serialization