Author: Conrad Greer
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Risk Management in MRO Material/ Item Master Identities
It’s common knowledge that MRO materials master data is often weak, harming Maintenance Repair & Operations (MRO) business performance. What to do about it in your own business is a different story. One of the challenges is there are lots of records to fix if you want a rational catalogue without several records representing the…
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Has the value of your MRO inventory been growing for years?
Do you get Finance pressure to control your use of working capital funds? All would likely be well if your Maintenance colleagues were singing your praises for excellent MRO material support. Unfortunately, Maintenance grievances about parts non-availability is as common as growing MRO inventory values. We have a dilemma, if our SCM MRO objective is…
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Sharpen your Saw
If your organization has not applied a useful identity standard for MRO parts, you do not have effective control of key system records supporting operation and maintenance of your physical assets. How much chaos is this causing in your MRO operations and production processes, how bad will it get? I chose my third career to…
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MRO Catalogues Without Comparable Item Identities are Fuel for a Fire Burning MRO Business Value
Non-comparable MRO material master identities impose significant cost and risk to your Company (more than your team or function). It’s a solvable problem if an item identity taxonomy is applied and the catalogue is rationalized. Payback is well less than a year, benefits will continue, teams will perform better and be happier. It’s a business…
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Transforming MRO is like Repairing a Worn Out Machine
You can compare a poorly functioning overall MRO process to a badly misaligned, out of balance pump with a worn impeller. To get design performance out of the machine, you need to fix all the causes. Fix one, or some of them and maybe you get better performance for a while, maybe not. You soon go…
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If the Goal is Safe Reliable Production Operations, Improve the Master Data Foundation
For better Operations & Maintenance outcomes in asset intensive companies, maximize the effectiveness of Maintenance and Supply Chain (MRO) business processes. The weakness is often in the supporting master data. MRO material identities, the combination of the descriptions, key specifications, and manufacturer’s part numbers (where applicable), are usually the weakest point. Ad hoc nomenclature standards…
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Problems from Weak MRO Material Identities
Applying a structured material identification taxonomy makes your MRO materials comparable so they can be usefully unique. SPC Results developed the SMI taxonomy for this purpose. Here are the problems continuing with ad hoc material identification leaves your business to grapple with. Weak MRO material identities cause losses in these areas: Operations Level SCM Maintenance…
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Quality Material Identities are fundamental to MRO Inventory Control
Inventory control is an old concept. It has been part of the business vocabulary likely since the days of Henry Ford. The idea is to apply management science to optimize the value and effectiveness of inventory. A typical definition is the process of keeping the right number of parts and products in stock to avoid…
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Does your asset intensive company grow by acquisition?
Standardize your MRO Material Identities to improve effectiveness. Inherent to a growth by acquisition strategy is betting that you run operations and maintenance more effectively than the acquired assets were run. Superior O&M performance shows up in financial results. Often acting as a counterweight to your superior processes and execution is the compounding effect of…
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Unique Structured MRO Material Identities Needed for MRO Digital Transformation
If you want to move beyond buzzy business trends to the nuts and bolts of actual business improvement, then human understandable material master identities (descriptions, MPNs, specs) are necessary for real progress. For asset intensive industries including energy, pipelines, utilities and mining; digital transformation of the maintenance and supply chain business processes usually features improved…