How reliable are your spare parts for critical equipment at your plant? When a critical piece of equipment comes down for scheduled or unscheduled maintenance, proper organization of your spare parts and related tools can reduce downtime by up to 50%. By setting up a best-in-class spare-parts process, the savings from a single repair job can pay for the entire program within your facility.
Most plants have critical-equipment spare parts, but the overall process of receiving, storage, and replenishment is generally not a priority for the organization. This philosophy results in the organization becoming reactive during both scheduled and unscheduled outages. This article provides a method of gaining control of your critical spare parts. First, this article reviews the costs associated with an inadequate spare-parts system and outlines how to determine which pieces of your equipment are critical in order to define the required spare parts needed in the warehouse to repair the identified items. (It is important to integrate this process into your computerized maintenance management system, or CMMS).
The second part of the article describes the process for kitting the parts, replenishing the kits after use, and returning kits to their proper place in the warehouse, and covers storage of specialty tools and the use and repair of oversize parts.
Read the rest of this article from our sister publication Plant Services.
