- Rajiv Anand
An ultimate goal of an efficient MRO inventory management process, in general, is right materials and the right place and right time, with minimal effort. If you are someone who does this for a living, you’d agree with me when I say it’s so much easier said than done.
In US alone, business spend more than $140 billion in MRO items out of which $25-$30 billion is lost due to mismanaged, misplaced or obsolete inventory. In fact $15 billion of these are just the items in service centers, vehicles and warehouses, never ever used and then tossed out due to obsolescence. None of these losses are however due to any lack of systems or processes, there are countless of them. The glue that could power these systems, data, ultimately comes from people. That is fundamental source of problem.
Challenges can come from unwillingness to account for things or adhere to an exhaustive process because that would slow down everything. The digital reality, data, then created from people gets far from physical.
Needless to say that an effort to manage MRO inventory effectively is worth the huge returns. Organizations can save as much as 25% from adopting a system that improves accuracy of data by improving visibility of physical items using automated means, such as RFID based systems. What this translates to is ability to:
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Perform cycle counts 50 times faster | Locate misplaced parts and jobs quickly | Get alerted on foreign parts and assemblies | Automated shipment and receive reconciliations |
to name a few.
Passive RFID technology is now getting adopted mainstream to achieve these results. Tagit’s Trapeze, LX and other application components are designed to help leverage the technology and save sizable cost of MRO inventory operations. Businesses can start small, with just being able to perform frequent and rapid cycle counts, and locate misplaced parts right away at very low solution costs.