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TRIGGERED?
What triggered you to read this blog? Is it because you empathise with these common problems shared by OEMs and manufacturers? Perhaps you too have these problems?
- Are your engineers spending excessive time sourcing and finding the parts they want?
- Are you wasting money through poor stock management?
- Does your purchasing team spend too much time on the MRO products?
- Is your finance team concerned about the level of MRO stock being written off annually?
Let’s dig into these problems one by one and see if we can’t find a way through them together.
1. Are your engineers wasting time sourcing and finding the parts they want?
Engineers are a scarce and valuable resource. You only need to have followed any industry sector updates for the last 20 years to know that there aren’t enough of them, and we aren’t training enough of them so the ones you do have must be treasured and used wisely. Our research shows that up to 40% of an engineer's time can be wasted sourcing parts and that when they visit the stores looking for a part it takes them 13 minutes EVERY time they do so! According to Glassdoor, the average salary for an engineer in 2023 is £40,705 so if we do the math that means most businesses are wasting £16,000 of on-hands tool time every year through inefficient sourcing. Plus, EVERY visit to the storeroom costs the business approximately £5!
Working with ERIKS to support this process, you can save 1-3% of your total MRO budget instead of tying up your engineers’ time. One typical saving is to convert OEM spares to standard parts for faster and often more cost-effective replenishment. Plus, ERIKS can significantly reduce ‘walk and wait’ times by managing and optimising your stores. Parts can be ordered by calling the office, and if in stock can be picked and ready for when you get to the store's area. For frequently used parts or Personal Protective Equipment, vending machines can be installed closer to the process to reduce walk times, reduce downtime and improve productivity, all of which are complete with automated reordering.
For more information on the topic visit here
2. Are you wasting money through poor stock management?
When you have visitors to your site do you head for the stores as a gleaming example of the world class manufacturing business you aspire to be or is the area given a wide berth because, as one of our new customers recently said, “It’s like going back to the 1970s’? Poor stock management takes various forms from the duplication of parts and an overly full storeroom to slow response to breakdowns due to the inability to find critical spares. Inevitably this leads to what we call ‘squirrel stores’ where engineers start to stash equipment, they deem critical, in places only they know where to find it. That way chaos lies!
Poor stock management can waste between 5 and 15% of your budget! ERIKS has many solutions to help improve productivity from simply reorganising a store to optimise layout, to selecting the most efficient storage media to maximise storage space or enriching part numbers and descriptions to make them easier to find. We also can supply a fully integrated vending and eSolution.
For more information on the topic visit here
3. Does your purchasing team spend too much time on the MRO products?
There’s a dreadful statistic relating to MRO products and procurement, but I am not sure you are ready for it. Take a deep breath, sit back and ensure you have a hot drink to hand to address the shock. OK, ready? The truth is that 65% of purchasing resource is dedicated to MRO products which account for just 10% of the spend. I know, I told you it was shocking. But why is this? In truth it’s the combination of several factors from messy data that needs to be reviewed and cleansed and re-ordered according to industry-standard descriptions to difficulty accessing the technical knowledge to know if an OEM part can be replaced by a standard spare without effecting productivity.
Outsourcing this problem to ERIKS enables us to take full responsibility for procurement, stores and inventory management. Managing everything from spare parts to critical spares, ERIKS can reduce inventory, improve stock availability and reduce the risk of downtime. Using the purchasing leverage of the ERIKS group, we can deliver sizeable cost savings including simplification of the supply chain and single vendor agreements.
For more information on the topic visit here
4. Is your finance team concerned about the level of stock being written off annually?
Does your Finance Director go a little green around March time? The chances are that it is nothing to do with face painting and celebrating St Patrick’s day a little too enthusiastically but more to do with calculating the amount of MRO stock that is being written off in the end of year accounts. Uncontrolled stock usage can waste between 5-15% of spend and lead to poor decisions made on stock criticality.
ERIKS’ inventory control software enables you to: Put in authorisation and access controls, add transaction logging to specific users and cost centres and provide full and accurate audit and reporting capabilities around the who, what, when and where of stock. Accountability and traceability inevitably lead to more careful and informed decision making which all helps in the war against over-stocking and obsolescence.
For more information on the topic visit here
Are your stores keeping you awake at night?
Outsource your store’s management with ERIKS OnSite integrated supply chain. With ERIKS OnSite integrated supply chain you can save up to 20% of your current MRO spend and positively impact the productivity and efficiency of your supply chain.
That is the real value in an indirect supply chain, and why it’s not always best to go direct. If you’d like further information, why not contact us or give us a call on 0121 508 6000.
#ERIKS #LetsMakeIndustryWorkBetter #OnsiteSolutions #MROSupply #Supply #Chain #Onsite
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