MRO Master Data Management is a discipline driven by two functional areas in manufacturing – Maintenance/Operations and Procurement. Both rely on technology and domain expertise to ensure the accuracy and consistency of shared master data to optimize supply and minimize risk.
MRO Data Management is the foundation of a healthy MRO supply chain as it extends into various functions to provide improvements enterprise-wide:
- Sourcing
- Purchasing
- Maintenance
- Inventory
- Analytics
- Quality & Asset Management
- BOM Development
1. Sourcing
Since the integrity of item master data helps drive clarity, improve leverage, increase compliance and yield improved savings, its best to start by cleansing your data to improve completeness and accuracy, and to reveal hidden opportunities.
These discoveries have produced increased savings, 8 – 15% reduction in parts price, inventory reductions, and re-engineering opportunities. Beyond the obvious MRO savings, MRO data management helps sourcing:
Improve response times
- Better leverage the market
- Enable secondary market sourcing
- Increase RFQ effectiveness
2. Purchasing
MRO Purchasing is another area that is impacted by the quality of your data and master data management. Category discounts can’t be achieved without visibility into your MRO data. Specific pricing agreements or SPAs and customer-specific pricing all should be tracked for visibility within the item master.
Clean, dependable data also ensures compliance to negotiated contract pricing, including capturing any rebate opportunities. It helps automate stock purchasing, enable larger enterprise purchases, and ensures invoice accuracy.
3. Maintenance
Standardized, normalized, and enriched data ensures enterprise-wide visibility. This reduces the amount of time spent searching for parts. On average, maintenance technicians spend 20-30% of their time searching for the parts they need to do their job. MRO Data Management helps cut down on this time by keeping market availability and supplier information current as well.
Data impacts work completion as well. Over 50% of work orders cannot be completed because the technicians are waiting for the parts. Improvements in MRO Data Management means improved work accuracy, increased wrench time, increased uptime, and better planning.
4. Inventory
It’s no surprise that inventory is impacted by the quality of your MRO data and item master. Enterprise-wide visibility, optimization, sharing inventory across plants, kitting, planning, vending and storeroom effectiveness are all impacted by MRO data management and can lead to a potential 20 – 40% reduction in inventory.
5. MRO Analytics
MRO data enables the analytics that allow businesses to make quick, informed decisions, spot trends, and evaluate production for more effective planning, and more efficiency.
6. Quality & Asset Management
Data truly is the foundation for everything. It’s not just analytics and inventory accuracy. The quality of your item master and your ability to effectively manage your MRO data impacts the reliability and accuracy of your production lines. TQM and LEAN processes are all enabled by clean, accurate MRO data to reduce defects, reduce unplanned shut-downs and reduce down-time during overhauls and other planned maintenance. Clean, accurate data can potentially lead to a 5 – 8% uptime improvement.
7. BOM Development
Having an accurate Bill of Materials for both critical and non-critical spares on your assets is crucial to ensure plant productivity. Equipment design and manufacturing changes continually – making it difficult to maintain accurate data. Historical data can be lost during software upgrades, and parts often sit unmanaged in storehouses waiting to be consumed – risking damage, corrosion, and loss. Recording accurate data on all equipment, parts, and linking the parts to the correct equipment is a fundamental building block for any Reliability Program. Master data management allows for material-to-asset tie-in to ensure production line reliability. In addition, BOM development enables companies to make the turn to more preventive and predictive maintenance.
The biggest challenges stem from the stewardship of data. Enterprise data is often hostage to a single master, with limited view of sponsor requirements. This means the focus is typically on standards rather than use – leading to poor customer service, maverick inventories, inaccurate classification, and ultimately, a higher cost of doing business. In addition to clarity, leverage, compliance and savings, coordinated Master Data Management efforts between Maintenance, Operations and Procurement results in reliable, efficient, safe and sustainable assets and throughput.
