MRO Inventory Data Standardization

IN TODAY'S EVER CHANGING GLOBAL ECONOMY, companies must stay competitive to survive. Operating at peak performance is considered business critical. For asset-intensive organizations, a key to achieving peak performance is having a robust Materials Management program. It starts with an accurate and standardized MRO inventory catalog. We hear this all the time:

• What is the part named? - Craftsmen waste hours per day looking for parts because there are no standard naming conventions
• Who used the part? - If no one checks the part out, then count in the system will be inaccurate
• When should I order more parts? - Most of the time a part's inventory level has little to do with the importance of the asset that the part belongs to. This often results in too much or too little stock.
• Where can I find the part? - Parts are stored in bins on the shop floor or under the desks and their locations are often undocumented; searches waste time.

All this adds up to wasted time, extended equipment down time, and excessive inventory - wasted money.

MRG has been helping companies for over 25 years clean and standardize their MRO data as part of an overall Materials Management program. It doesn't matter if you are using SAP, Maximo or other CMMS/EAM systems; MRG has the experience. MRG provides a cost effective approach that utilizes our proven tools, libraries and experience to complete MRO data standardization projects on time.

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New White Paper! Is Your Asset Management Program Built on a House of Cards?

Is Your Asset Management Program Built on a House of Cards?

With more than one trillion dollars in new capital expenditures planned per year and potential savings exceeding one percent of lifecycle costs (Uptime, 2012), it is not surprising that operational readiness is receiving a great deal of attention. Moreover, with ISO 55000 slated for release in 2014, companies are likely to see increasing pressure from regulators and customers to have seamless control of asset data throughout the lifecycle. Bruno Storino expanded on DiStefano 2012 with "Capital Projects Operational Readiness and Business Risks: Maximizing Returns on New Assets" (Storino 2012), which provides an overview of a comprehensive program that optimizes the transition from engineering to operations for new assets. This paper adds to that body of work by illustrating how to manage the handover of asset data-the lynchpin of operational readiness for large-scale projects.

In the early days of operations, the lack of detailed asset data and the corresponding lack of documented maintenance strategies inhibited the efficient allocation of plant resources. With business pressure high to generate positive cash flow, personnel are applied to making assets run, and requests for the additional resources needed to catch up on asset data are often denied. Once a plant is operating, the cold hard reality is that the profit and loss statement rules resource decision making. Poor quality asset data, reactive maintenance, and poor profit performance create a self-perpetuating cycle that is difficult to break.

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New White Paper! CMMS in the Wind Industry

CMMS in the Wind Industry

To benchmark the current U.S. wind turbine fleet reliability performance and identify the major contributors to component-level failures and other downtime events, the Department of Energy (DOE) funded the development of the Continuous Reliability Enhancement for Wind (CREW) database by Sandia National Laboratories (Sandia). Through a wide variety of activities and interactions, Sandia National Laboratories has observed limited adoption of electronic work orders in the wind industry. To explore some of the contributing factors for this limited adoption, the CREW team looked to other industries to determine whether there are limitations in the tools sets available to the wind industry. This report will review some of the software tools available for use in the wind industry. This report is one of the steps in driving a culture change toward the electronic collection of accurate work order data and the developing a "full data picture."

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New White Paper! EAM and CMMS Implementations: Are you getting what you paid for?

New White Paper! EAM and CMMS Implementations: Are you getting what you paid for?

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) and Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) implementations have become significantly more complex over the last decade. The days of installing an application and using it only in maintenance departments are gone. Today, with larger and more complex enterprises, management needs to have near real-time access to data that could affect the company's ability to produce its product. That, coupled with the need to reduce the cost of production, makes it easy to understand why the systems have become more integrated.

The applications are designed to house data. That data ranges from assets to inventory to craft types and crew makeup, and more. Collectively it's a lot of data. Historically such systems were designed in-house or purchased from an industry-specific vendor. At the core, these systems can all store, categorize, and report on events, but they are only as good as the information they are fed. At some point after the system is in place, there will be a need to evaluate it for viability or to re-determine requirements. Questions will arise, including "Are we getting what we paid for, and if not, why?"

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New MRG Article - Are You Being Ruined By Best Efforts?

New MRG Article - Are You Being Ruined By Best Efforts?

Mike Whittaker CMRP, is leading MRG's European team. Mike's article "Are You Being Ruined By Best Efforts?" was published in the Nov/Dec 2012 issue of Maintenance and Engineering magazine. To read more, click here.