Industry ‘wasting millions on poor maintenance’

Andy Silver, the company's commercial and operations director, warned: "The recent recession encouraged industry to look closely at its operations to drive out all unnecessary cost and streamline where possible. "Unfortunately, storeroom and inventory were all-too-often overlooked, which means that there is a lot of slack in terms of spares, inventory and wasted time in the system." ERIKS has identified four key drivers of poor maintenance, repair and operations (MRO), including production downtime resulting from unavailable parts or poor stores management and inventory control; out of control spending on spares; wasted time due to MRO engineers sourcing parts and paperwork, rather than focusing on core activities. Silver added: "Many companies do not have the basic controls and tracking systems that provide visibility of costs in terms of ordering, warehousing, transportation and other expenses... "The lack of systems results in insufficient stock, duplication and obsolescence which cause lost time or tie-up working capital and act as a drain on profits." He said the problem could be exacerbated by individual MRO engineers taking matters into their own hands: "It is not uncommon to find that many individual MRO engineers, aware that their company's maintenance practices are not up-to-scratch, stockpile parts in vans or lockers in order to keep items close to hand and reduce their own hands-on tool time..." "My advice to UK industry is to look closely at MRO spend and put key performance indicators in place which can be monitored."