Spares management is a common problem across heavy industry. Many sites will readily admit that they are suffering from excessive downtime or costs due to the way they manage spares.

Here’s a typical scenario: a maintenance manager will call for a spares review after one disaster too many. They have previously identified their critical equipment, and therefore the manager assumed that the critical spares associated with this equipment would be in a register, and were being managed by Supply.

However, what the maintenance manager found was that the register was out-of-date, incomplete, inaccurate, and in some cases lacked consistent understanding or logic around what constitutes a critical spare.

Sound familiar?

The root cause of these scenarios is often inadequate asset management strategies and maintenance plans. Bluefield has learned that spares criticality analysis first requires an understanding of asset criticality. The spares criticality analysis can then be carried out quickly and easily once they are considered as part of an overall asset strategy. Spares are simply another way to manage the risk of the asset failure in the same way as maintenance tactics, only they’re intended to mitigate the consequences of asset failure rather than reduce the likelihood.

Many maintenance teams also feel like they have little control over their critical spares – how many they have in stock, where they’re sourced, or how they’re managed in storage. It’s important that a critical spares analysis acts as a demand signal (requirement) for Supply to respond to by delivering the parts for the job and replenishing stock levels.

Here is where the spares optimisation exercise comes in – we know that for a maintenance manager, too many spares are never enough! On the other hand, for a supply or commercial manager, inventory is an evil to be eliminated at all costs! By using a risk-based approach, sites can balance the supply and demand requirements for their spares in a way that everyone can understand and accept, even if they don’t agree with them. Only then can a team gain control over their spares.

Bluefield’s approach to conducting spares criticality analyses and optimisation studies is designed to be both practical and robust. We can use our in-house criticality assessment tools to import data and criteria from clients’ own systems and processes, allowing us to perform the analyses using real data. If a client has their own systems and processes, our team can adapt our approach to suit your requirements. However, if there are gaps in the available information, Bluefield can bring our own data and methods to fill these in and complete the study.

Our Asset Management Specialists have many years of experience in performing these studies across a variety of asset classes and industries, so we understand the importance of producing results that can be implemented, rather than sitting on a hard drive somewhere unused. We can provide the results of spares criticality analyses and optimisation studies in multiple formats that support upload to your CMMS, or presentation of the results to your leadership team.

If you’re looking for a partner to help you get your spares under control, contact Bluefield today.