Lean processes, while being widely deployed in manufacturing, are only now gaining the recognition they deserve in plant and facilities maintenance. Regardless of the systems in place, the visibility and management of critical spares and MRO procurement represents in many cases the “low-hanging fruit” and most easily accessible savings opportunities.
More Visibility + More Information = Better Decisions
Employees thrive on information. Tablets and easy access to computers or workstations provide the opportunity to empower employees like never before. Technicians can receive notifications that work orders are pending, access and interact with work orders on mobile devices, view manuals, diagrams, schematics and images all at point of use and all in real time.
Equally important, employees can check on-hand inventories and view entire OEM parts lists and supplier databases. Easy to use and easy to deploy, affordable communication solutions supporting point-of-use information access is one of the most easily implemented solutions for saving substantial time in the workplace.
Immediate savings can be realized by minimizing or eliminating time spent waiting for required items to be pulled or staged from supply room inventories. The next opportunity of savings includes eliminating travel time by deploying a runner to bring required items to the point of use, rather than having the employee travel to the supply room. Both examples include an assumption of cost for the software to manage remote requisitions. Typically, software that supports requisitions will also support inventory management and most, if not all, of the normal procurement functionality.
The Model
In the example below (Table 1), we are modeling a facility with 20 employees, each making two trips to the supply room per day with a wait time of only three minutes. The shop rate for the employee is $40 per hour. The software in this example has an all-in monthly cost of $650. The net savings to the enterprise is $1,070 per month.
The same scenario, including a new employee at $15 per hour who acts as a runner, will save the enterprise $1,930 per month. If an existing employee were used as a runner, the monthly savings would increase to $4,510 per month.
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