Getting your Storeroom “Back to Basics”

By Dick DeFazio, President & CEO

If your storeroom is not up to where it should be, the efficiency and effectiveness of your maintenance teams will suffer. The fundamental roles of parts management have not changed much since I started my career, and it is still a critical cog in maintenance. We now have good software systems that allow us to manage parts on a much larger scale than in the past, but these systems alone are not enough to ensure strong performance. If procurement, maintenance and operations are not working together, and if the software systems themselves are not maintained, maintenance performance will suffer.

I started my career in the late 1960’s in the Air Force, maintaining Jet aircraft. Our unit was responsible for the maintenance of the Communication, Navigation and Instrumentation equipment on the aircraft. Back then managing spare parts and inventory was very basic since modern CMMS software was not yet available. Looking back, we didn’t even have organized storerooms, as parts for the various repair shops worked from a central room where they were stored on open shelves and inventory was transferred using paper cards. Usage was recorded manually when parts were received and issued for use. Although we used paperwork orders, most repairs simply involved troubleshooting by removing and replacing parts until we found the right one that would work. There really was no history on parts or repairs or proper documentation, anything to keep the planes flying.

After the service, I went to work for a large Electric Utility company, and managing spare parts and inventory wasn’t a whole lot different, except we had a separate building with shelving and racks to store parts, and these little colored tubs for parts, still very much in use at many places today. We used tub card files with everything handwritten on file cards for each part. We hand coded everything, and all of the steps were manual, including receiving, stock put up, and issue. Bar coding had not come along yet. Neither had cycle counting. A big part of my job was to reconcile inventory by manually counting and validating what was listed on the card files to what was actually on the shelves. Each month we had to reconcile the inventory before we could close the books. It was tedious, labor intensive and time consuming, and quite frankly painful. When modern software came along to automate the process it was a godsend.

The way we manage spares and inventory today has changed a lot since then. Maintenance management software has replaced card files, allowing plants to manage tens of thousands of parts. Nevertheless, we still do the same things to manage spares and maintenance. Management software is only as good as the people using it! Spare parts have a flow: they are ordered, received, stored, issued for use and then they are installed on the piece of equipment. In some cases, they may be removed from the asset base, repaired and returned to inventory. Every step in the process must be recorded.

Here are some common pitfalls that we help our clients overcome today:

• Technicians and storeroom managers waste time looking for parts. The parts catalog is the foundation of how maintenance management software systems track inventory. Each time a new part is added to the catalog, a new master record is created. Detailed descriptions of parts become more and more important as the number of parts in inventory increases. When you have thousands of parts in inventory, you must be able to tell them apart without crawling through the cribs! A poor-quality parts catalog can be at the root of a host of other problems because it supports every step in the flow of parts through the plant.
• If the storeroom is not secured, the actual parts availability doesn’t always match what is in the system. When technicians are in a hurry, they may forget to record the issuance of a part. All inventory must be secured! There are many solutions available today to help with this, including barcoding and self-service vending machines.
• The storeroom is a mess because physical storage is poorly organized. This is another surefire way to waste time looking for parts. It should be easy to navigate from the software that tracks the part to the actual aisle, shelf and bin.
• The maintenance planner is actually a parts expediter. Any of the above problems alone is enough to make the planner’s job difficult. We generally see them all occurring together. When the planner cannot count on issuing a pick ticket and knows that the kit can be assembled before the job is scheduled, they are likely to take matters into their own hands. They start ordering parts for their jobs and expediting them to make sure that repairs do not lag. The problem is often compounded if the job (repair) is postponed, and the original part is not returned to stock. This invariably triggers a reorder and now the item is in an over max condition.

At PCA, we are experts at helping troubleshoot and correct spare parts and inventory management problems. We have very detailed SOP’s and process models that can help organizations establish and “get back to basics”!

Please reach out if we can help.