7 Epic Fails in MRO: Fix poor data management permeating an ERP ecosystem
Written by Nupur Agrawal
Most
businesses typically put their energy, resources and investment into
things like product design, sales and marketing, production efficiency,
process control, IT and supply-chain management. With so many important
priorities vying for attention, managing a company’s MRO supply chain
has typically been neglected.
Capital equipment downtime costs huge dollar losses per day, especially
in asset-intensive industries like mining and oil & gas companies.
One of the challenges this sector faces is the complexity and diverse
configurations of the equipment. Often, the technical information
needed to complete a repair of equipment (especially unscheduled
services) is spread across multiple manuals and databases, resulting in
longer downtimes, which impacts maintenance efficiency and in turn
profits.
Maintenance management details procedures that define manpower
scheduling, equipment and tool control, quality control, reporting,
cost control, inventory control, training, loss prevention and
inspection/work status. The maintenance team holds the key to
maximizing assets, minimizing downtime and controlling costs. CMMS
software provides the foundation to deliver efficient, effective
maintenance regardless of the size and complexity of a maintenance team.
Sometimes knowing what not to do is helpful, so the following are seven don’t-dos in MRO master data management (MDM).
1. Free-for-all MRO text descriptions: Unleashing
peoples’ inner Shakespeare by letting each one choose their own words
and styles to describe MRO items results in item descriptions that are
cryptic, differently abbreviated and often unintelligible to anyone
other than the person who created them (and even to them if enough time
passes). For example, is a ball bearing a “ball bearing,” a “brg,” a
“ball brg,” a “bb,” a “b bear,” etc.
2. Taxonomy-free MRO: Having no discernible
taxonomy forces search and analysis activities into labour intensity
and failure. Simple, high-level taxonomies may help somewhat with
search but leave detailed drill-down-type analyses virtually impossible
to accomplish without ad hoc manual or external classification
exercises.
Solution for 1 & 2: Deploy an MDM
solution layer for MRO that automatically generates standardized short
and long item descriptions from key item attribute fields. UNSPSC
taxonomy has become the standard for classifying spending data and B2B
e-commerce transactions; adopting the same standard for MRO item master
classification enables transaction, inventory and consumption data to
be viewed through a single, powerful lens.
3. No ownership: Giving people direct access to create
item and supplier masters in ERP without a master data management
solution layer primed for data validation is just asking for
incomplete, inconsistent and inaccurate data.
4. No workflow for MRO: Workflow makes certain the
right people pay attention and participate in the process. Most
importantly, though, workflow makes it as easy as possible for a person
to comply with policy.
Solution for 3 & 4: Establish clear
owners of MRO item master data. There is no getting around the fact
that enterprises need people with responsibility for item master
stewardship and policies to support them. Niche MDM solutions for MRO
enable just a few data stewards to manage and enforce policies easily
even in large, complex organizations.
5. Improper cash management: Cash tied up in inventory
or spent on non- or negative-value-adding work is not earning returns,
hampering investment in innovation, capital expansion, future business
and growth. It also forces enterprises to finance more working capital
for longer periods than necessary. Solution for 5: Create clean, enterprise-level views
of MRO stockpiles for better visibility and inventory optimization,
thus ensuring better cash management and liquidity scenario.
6. Unknown PM parameters: While preventative
maintenance is typically triggered by testing, visual inspection,
electronic sensors or OEM recommendations for scheduling, dirty MRO
master data makes such a scenario impossible to contemplate.
7. Tying poor MDM to performance: Systematic problems
like poor MRO master data management can affect many people’s
job-performance metrics negatively — in ways that are not under their
direct control. This corrupts the company’s performance management
system, leading to great personal frustration and low morale.
Solution for 6 & 7: Insight into real parts
consumption as it relates to particular machines might go a long way to
making preventative maintenance more science than art. This would also
go a long way in reducing breakdowns.
These failures provide a picture of the vast duplication,
misclassification, inconsistency and inaccuracy that permeates typical
industrial enterprises’ ERP ecosystems related to MRO.
Nupur Agrawal is the analyst and public relations lead with Zynapse. For more information, visit www.zynapse.com.
Most
businesses typically put their energy, resources and investment into
things like product design, sales and marketing, production efficiency,
process control, IT and supply-chain management. With so many important
priorities vying for attention, managing a company’s MRO supply chain
has typically been neglected.
