Strategies for Efficient MRO Parts Storerooms
By focusing on several strategies, managers can ensure departments' MRO storerooms generate savings for the organization.
Focusing on organization:
- eliminates the need for costly expansion or the construction of a new storage facility
- maximizes the effective use of existing space through efficient design and set-up
- leads to the replacement of old, homemade, or barely functional storage fixtures with modern, efficient units that increase the density of parts storage
- results in sorting parts generically, by specific machine, or by process, expediting their location and retrieval
- allows for more prompt location of parts, resulting in less equipment downtime
- helps storeroom supervisors create accurate inventories, which eliminate overstock, out-of-stock, or is-it-stocked problems
- frees up storage fixtures and storage areas for other uses
- enhances part and tool security and reduces storeroom traffic.
By focusing on consolidation, storeroom supervisors can:
- combine similar parts and tools in one place
- minimize on-hand stock
- reduce overall inventory dollar value
- make the set-up of minimum and reorder quantities more accurate
- free up storage areas and storage fixtures for other uses
- eliminate technicians' private stashes of parts and satellite storage areas
- reuse existing storage fixtures if they are functional and in good repair.
Focusing on automation, such as bar-coding technology, enables storeroom supervisors to:
make managing parts and tools faster and more accurate
record all aspects of every transaction accurately
eliminate manual data entry and mistakes for parts checkout, receipt and reorder
eliminate inefficient, time-wasting parts checkout using paper and pencil
conduct physical inventories and cycle counts more efficiently because the parts are bar-coded
provide a variety of useful reports.
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