Creating the “Perfect Warehouse” - MROConnection

1 warehouse plays a critical and value added role in helping to increase productivity, improve asset performance and reduce overall MRO materials costs. As the saying goes the dough is in MRO.". More specifically, an effective and efficient MRO. warehouse operation can . Increase maintenance productivity by 12. to 15%. Reduce MRO material costs by 20 to 30%. Reduce equipment downtime by 3 to 7%. Creating the perfect Applying these ranges to your own values will warehouse show you just how significant these improvements can be. Maintenance, Operations, Are you losing precious equipment uptime Purchasing and Stores are all beneficiaries of a because of maintenance having to do the crib properly run MRO warehouse Operation.

2 The key crawl to find the repair parts they need? to unlocking this value lies in MRO warehouse Best Practices. Are you searching for ways to reduce maintenance material costs while improving asset and process performance? So what are MRO warehouse Is your warehouse looking more like a war zone Best Practices? than a place for conducting business? Best Practices are the backbone of an efficient and effective MRO warehouse Operation. However, too many times MRO warehouses are neglected, improperly designed, poorly operated, lacking documented processes, not staffed appropriately and working with corrupted data. Historically, MRO. Look no further, the answer to these challenges inventories are one of lies in MRO warehouse Best Practices.

3 The most inefficiently and ineffectively managed units of an organization. Introduction This has a significant impact on productivity and A key component in supporting effective and reliability. A 1970's article in Duns' Review efficient asset management activities is the MRO entitled The High Cost of Bad Maintenance . Inventory warehouse . identified the single biggest reason of high maintenance costs as problems related to MRO. The warehouse 's primary roles are to secure, materials management. On average, a store and properly manage high usage and maintenance technician will spend 1 to 2 . production critical materials. An effective MRO hours per day trying to find the parts they need to warehouse Operation helps get the right get their work done.

4 If the right materials had material, in the right quantity, in the right been available, this time could have been condition, to the right place, at the right time reallocated to improving asset uptime and while minimizing total inventory cost. The reliability. 1. To be fair, it is not always the warehouse 's fault. If maintenance does not respect Stores' policies and/or submit timely and accurate job plans The first step in this implementation process is to identifying material requirements, then it can be perform an assessment of the existing (or non- difficult for Stores and Purchasing to adequately existent) warehouse operation. service, in a cost effective manner, every The purpose is to identify gaps maintenance material need.

5 Between the current environment and the best practice environment. MRO warehouse Best Practices are defined as An output of this assessment process is the the most efficient and effective means to development of a Project Implementation Plan managing, storing and handling MRO inventory that guides the facility and Stores operation from materials. its present state towards its future or model . state. For example; clean, standardized and enriched MRO inventory data, separation of receiving This initial assessment should address all and buying activities, elements of warehouse operation and its inventory cycle integration to its partners.

6 And those partners, counting, trained and maintenance, operations and purchasing, must be skilled warehouse included in the analysis and re-design efforts. personnel, clean and well organized warehouse , automated The assessment should be designed to answer requisitioning, reorder point optimization and key questions such as: performance indicators are just a few of the How are materials stored? critical MRO warehouse Best Practices that create What does the inventory data look like? value and support asset reliability efforts and Is the warehouse adequately designed? operational needs. How is the warehouse staffed? What kind of savings can be expected by So how do we improve MRO implementing MRO warehouse Best warehouse Operations?

7 Practices? The first place to start the MRO improvement Once the assessment is complete, a formal process is in the warehouse itself. Once stable presentation to management should follow. This warehouse operations have been established, will help expedite the buy-in process and serve maintenance and operations can work to improve to excite and educate management on the their pre-planning efforts. opportunities that are available by controlling and properly managing MRO inventory materials. At first glance, this appears to be a daunting task. Trying to organize, store, identify and properly manage thousands of disparate inventory items, Improving MRO warehouse with different and seemingly unpredictable Operations begins with demand patterns, creates an environment in understanding exactly what items which it is difficult to succeed.

8 Will be maintained in the warehouse A physical inventory will identify not only obsolete and Creating an implementation strategy that is unusable parts, but also highlight any duplication simple, straight forward and thorough, is critical of items. Once the universe of parts to be stored to a successful MRO warehouse Operation. is identified, the physical redesign may proceed. There are seven key elements to implementing MRO items must be properly sheltered, MRO warehouse Best Practices. organized, identified, and labeled in order to be effectively and efficiently managed. Additionally, 2. a professional-looking warehouse fosters Item descriptions should be developed in organizational respect and discipline, something a noun, modifier, attribute and value that many MRO warehouses sorely need.

9 Format utilizing a Standard Modifier Dictionary (SMD) approach. The design of a warehouse should include: Definition of material storage and square II. warehouse Setup footage requirements Correctly organizing, binning, and labeling Identification of storage media inventory materials and locations is critical to requirements and suggested layouts easily finding and sourcing inventory items. Development of an inventory location Additionally, properly storing MRO inventories scheme can extend parts life. Materials should be Identification of office, issue, receipt, organized by usage and available cubic space, kitting, and staging areas ( with high usage items near issue points) and not Recommendations on material handling by commodity.

10 Equipment Once the warehouse has been designed and built, it must be properly setup. Storage media must be moved in, parts relocated, databases developed and/or updated. There are two key steps to mobilization: Data Setup and warehouse Setup. I. Data Setup Developing and maintaining a clean, standardized and enhanced inventory database is the brick and mortar of an EAM. (Enterprise Asset Management) inventory module and every MRO warehouse Excellence Initiative. Poor descriptive information can reduce maintenance productivity and decrease asset uptime. Operating an effective and efficient MRO warehouse Data integrity is a must. Integrity requires operation is comprised of two that the data is clean, consistent, parts.