Do you run a warehouse that deals in spare parts? Are you struggling with ways to run it more efficiently?
Perhaps you feel you’re not organized enough and often losing track of things.
You can streamline your spare part warehouse to make it run smoothly and become more successful. Read below to learn five great tips.
1. Operations Strategy
Safety should come first with your operation strategy, but after that, you can do some things to help your spare part warehouse run better.
You can run your spare part store from a reactionary or predictive position. You don’t want to fall into the reactionary category. This will put you behind the eight-ball, so to speak and slow down your operation.
You want to come from a predictive point of view to set yourself up for success. Sure, there can be things that come up, and you have to react, but predicting problems before they happen is a better way to deal with it.
A great way to use predictive spare part inventory management is to collect and analyze your data. Then, you’ll see the entire scope of your operation and be able to make decisions on a broad scale first. Then narrow it down to specifics.
2. Control Your Inventory
The best way to do this is to have two categories for your spare part warehouse. You should have a critical and non-critical category. If a part is critical to a machine’s operation or function, then choose always to have it on hand.
If the part is not, you don’t always have to have it stocked. This will cut down unnecessary overhead and give you better inventory control.
Review the two categories every three or four months. Also, make sure you store the spare parts in the correct sections.
3. Stockout
You can’t eliminate stockout issues, but you can identify the major cause of it and fix it. Make sure you record out of stock parts when they happen.
Keep a tight log of these and evaluate it regularly. Things have to be organized correctly. Also, keep in mind that the biggest reason for stockout is a delay in the supply chain.
4. Lead Time
If you want to run your stock operation successfully, you’ll need a comprehensive understanding of lead times. This will help you figure out which parts you need to stock. If you don’t run this properly, you can suffer financial losses from downtime.
Determine which of your parts have extended lead times and make sure they are stocked at all times. Keep in mind off-brand parts can save you here.
These can often be obtained quicker. As long as the machine can use substitute parts, then you’re all set.
5. Calculate
Occasional equipment failure is perhaps inevitable. However, you can soften this blow be calculating your downtime. You should know this down to the hour. For example, one hour of downtime will cost you say $5,000.
If the part takes one day to arrive, that’s 24 hours times $5,000. This needs to be taken into consideration and incorporated into your books.
The Spare Part Fix
These five tips will make you a successful spare part warehouse manager. You’ll have an efficient, streamlined warehouse that will make your life easier and business much more successful.
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