Spares Management
From Imrtwiki
Sydney Water have a large number of spares in service and classify groups of pumps together that are compatible and can be used to replace a failed item even if the replacements performance or efficiency is not ideal. They also have setup standards for many spares such as submersible pumps for items such as cable length, so a few types of rotable spares can be used in a wide range of applications. Sydney Water has an opportunity to improve spares management by improving the communication between its engineering teams and trades teams. They have an issue where the security on there maintenance data is set high for reasons of KPI security but this has the effect of making it difficult for maintenance people to update specification and equipment data.
Hunter Water has historically not kept spares of pumps, as each pump station location has redundancy. The only spares have tended to be items that have been made redundant. This can create a reactive environment especially under the pressure of trying to maintain no environmental discharges in wet weather. They also have standards for base plates and cable lengths for submersible pumps to allow quick changeover from a small group of spares types.
Orica has a system for sharing critical spares between their global sites. RTCA has run into problems where spares where shared between sites that have different lubrication specification. This issues need to be managed.
It is important to have KPI’s for suppliers and one of the key ones is their ability to match the Required/Agreed delivery dates, “Stop the supplier delivery date bullshit”. RTCA use a -3+3 automatic Quadran expedite system that is initiated 3 days before delivery is due and requests a fax back report if the delivery within 3 days is not achieved. Another approach used is to request a standard weekly work in progress report where the supplier has to identify what jobs have had their progress slip against the required delivery date.
Other Supplier KPI’s used by Bluescope are number of Non-Conformances, Success in solving Non-Conformances, surveys of front line customers (suppliers need 75% approval). Another recommended approach is to have semi-formal visits to workshops with a standard check list that focuses of quality as well a safety and environmental issues.
