Poorly identified Maintenance Repair & Operations (MRO) spare parts in business systems at asset intensive companies is common and costly. SCM and Maintenance functions are harmed by poor MRO item identity standards. MRO item catalogues are filled with partially identified indeterminate items causing mistakes, confusion, cost, risk and frustration.
The MRO item identity problem causes the most harm in companies with extensive legacy MRO material masters created without a consistent useful item identity standard. These companies also have the greatest ongoing value opportunity.
The issue is poor MRO item identity data quality rules. To be useful item identities need to be structured so they are fully comparable. When all item identity attributes are comparable, then we can approach the gold standard of having only one MRO item in the ERP/CMMS to represent each needed real-world MRO item. Common practice during master data loads, mergers, new capital project and ongoing new record requests is to check for duplicates by comparing manufacturer’s part numbers (MPN), a single field prone to it’s own poor data quality. Inadequate duplicate checks can allow MRO catalogues to grow to 20 to 50% or more items than needed enabling all the follow on chaos we struggle with.
SPC Results has the experience and skills to fix to the MRO material identity problem. The solution is to apply a custom structured identity taxonomy to make items more than just unique, but fully comparable. Full comparability allows catalogue rationalization. After rationalization, the taxonomy is used to ensure quality persists.
We can help
Conrad and team have an MRO Material Identity Transformation approach that proceeds from MRO Health Check all the way through to stock and data consolidations post data cleanse. SPC Results can apply their data quality rules in your Master Data Management (MDM) system or with a data cleansing outsource team. A defining difference of SPC Results is experience with both industrial MRO materials as well as deep ERP skills (SAP in particular). You will be dealing with people that know the difference between an armature and a ferrule to support your successful and valuable MRO transformation.
Boost operational effectiveness with high ROI and rapid payback in addressing this long-standing master data weakness.