By Bob DiStefano, COO, Performance Consulting Associates

There are few things more frustrating than getting halfway through a home maintenance project and finding that you cannot finish the job because you have the wrong material or part! We have all had the days when we took on projects that needed two or three trips to a home improvement store because we needed one more widget than we thought. Fortunately, the maintenance profession has the tools and capabilities to avoid this problem in the workplace where the consequences of figuring it out on the fly are much more costly and time-consuming. Top performing maintenance organizations use bills-of-materials extensively to take the guesswork out of planning repairs.

Bills of Material (BOM) Review and BOM Creation Services:

The primary objective of the BOM review and creation process is to expedite the kitting process. BOMs help storeroom personnel find the right parts in the right condition, quantity and time required to support the work schedule. BOMs are a critical enabling component to a top-quartile work management process. Many companies suffer significant and costly consequences from having incomplete, inaccurate or missing BOMs. On average across numerous industrial and manufacturing industries, Fourth Quartile companies have less than 30% of the assets in the plant covered by complete and accurate BOM’s loaded into the Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). Top Quartile companies have more than 70% of their equipment covered with BOMs.

A variety of benefits are realized by organizations having complete and accurate BOMs covering a large percentage of the plant equipment. Some of these benefits include:

• Higher maintenance craftsman wrench time (as much as 2 hours per day per craftsman)
• Reduced frustration for plant personnel searching for parts in the CMMS and often not finding them
• Decreased stock-outs resulting in fewer expensive, rush shipments to the site
• Optimized inventory with as much as 25% fewer items required to be stocked
• Precision repairs using the properly engineered spare parts, resulting in shorter Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) and longer Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF)
• Decreased equipment downtime

It is important to distinguish between complete Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) BOMs and Planner BOMs. Planner BOMs include primarily the wear parts that are likely to be needed in normal corrective and preventive maintenance activities. OEM BOMs are useful if you want to manufacture that piece of equipment from scratch, but they are not necessary for normal maintenance. Nor is it necessary to stock all of the items in an OEM BOM!

PCA uses an effective and efficient BOM review and creation process. Our Field Engineers work with site personnel to provide a thorough set of high quality “Planner” Bills of Materials (BOMs). To begin, BOMs in the CMMS are de-cluttered, removing items that are not truly spare parts (gloves, PPE, penetrating oils, tools, etc.). These items often find their way onto BOMs via automatic processes in the CMMS and get in the way of using the BOM as a reference tool for critical parts. BOMs are then updated to ensure that all parts that are likely to be used during routine maintenance are included. Our engineers use our extensive BOM library of common equipment. By checking the equipment manufacturer, model number and serial number against this BOM library, matches can be brought back as advanced starting points for development of a true Planner BOM. Other reference material includes OEM recommended spare parts lists, historical parts usage at the site, tribal knowledge of site personnel and local documentation.

In most cases, BOMs are missing for a large percentage of installed equipment. Our Field Engineers create new BOMs for these assets – starting with the most critical equipment and working through the equipment list until approximately 70% of the equipment is covered. Finally, once BOMs are edited and/or created, our Field Engineers will search the existing equipment database to find like equipment in the plant which could benefit from that BOM. While care must be exercised due to possible differences in material of construction, mounting orientation and other asset-specific factors, leveraging BOMs to like equipment multiplies the benefits of each BOM significantly.

A Win-Win for Everyone

These new services bolster the efforts of PCA consultants, who help with planning, scheduling, executing and documenting work for future analysis. Until now, the deficiencies we have found in BOMs and PMs have been identified as problems needing resolution by the client and most often the client couldn’t dedicate the resources to these labor-intensive tasks. As a result the work management process remained sub-optimized. Now, we will be resolving those problems for our clients, and thereby smoothing their paths to success.

We are thrilled to be offering these two new services. I look forward to speaking with our current clients as well as management in other organizations who are seeking end-to-end facility operations and maintenance optimization. For more information or to schedule a consultation, call 770-717-2737 or visit www.pcaconsulting.com.