When your equipment or machine fails, the time starts ticking and the productivity of your employees starts to dwindle away as your machine remains broken. If you don’t have the parts necessary to fix your equipment, you are looking at more than just a couple hours of downtime. On the flip side, over-preparing by purchasing too many safety supplies is a waste of space and money, especially if it becomes dead inventory before you can use it. Reduce the amount of precious time spent frantically searching for critical spares and reduce overspending by taking these three steps.
Step 1: Get Organized
Unorganized, centralized storage closets take time getting to and make it difficult to find necessary parts fast. Getting organized is only the first step to developing a better way to track MRO stock. One of the best ways to ensure organization is to use several point-of-use vending machines to hold parts and critical spares. In the case of a disaster, you no longer have the stress and hassle of scavenging through a messy tool crib or closet and possibly find you don’t have what you need. Organizing will allow you to find the parts necessary to fix your machine and resume operations.
Step 2: Take Control of Safety Stock
Take control of your back stock by reducing inventory without creating stock-outs that result in shutdowns. Inventory management systems that are capable of analyzing the actual demand of inventory on an hourly basis can help you make buying decisions based on real-time consumption and acquisition patterns as opposed to a simple min/max system. Typically, there is an average reduction of 20% in MRO inventory and other items when using a demand-based system to run your facility’s inventory. This solution has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars in a very short amount of time for many companies.
Step 3: Automate Reordering
Make it easy for yourself, when stock gets low setup critical alerts to automate the reordering process. Critical inventory alerts can send emails out to inventory managers when MRO inventory levels get too low. The system will automatically re-order stock using EDI and advanced ship notices (ASN), which communicates directly to multiple suppliers. You won’t spend countless dollars using overnight or same day shipping to get critical spares delivered as soon as possible. Get everything you need before you run out and potentially reduce safety stock to zero.
Stop looking for your MRO stock, reduce your safety stock and setup critical alerts that will automatically order when MRO inventory is low to save you time, money and hassle. When your equipment goes down, you will know you have the spares necessary to make the repair. All that’s left to do is quickly grab the part from your dispensing system, repair your machine and get your employees back to work. Feel secure in knowing your systems won’t be down for long because you have your critical spares available. Imagine how much more efficient your MRO processes will become when you implement an industrial vending system with an inventory management software.