Optimize your Inventory using Industry Standard Naming

For large scale production in manufacturing as well as processing industries, multiple sites spread across different geographical locations are often seen to have a volume of thousands of MRO spares. The inventory data for these MRO spares that is fed into the EAM systems is obviously done by different personnel, who have a tendency to use naming conventions as per their individual or environmental preferences rather than a standard norm. Lack of standard structures and naming patterns clubbed with perceptions and convenience thereby causes the purchase description to become inconsistent, partial or non-comparable. This therefore leads to a critical situation, that well addressed on time can bring in considerable savings for the department as well as the organization.

Here’s an example that shows 3 different inventory data managers entering details for a PUMP CASING in 3 different naming convention:

 At a later date when the data is required for a centralized purchase request, these naming patterns would have a detrimental impact as they would cause the following issues:

• Increase in Inventory Costs
• Inefficient management of Capital
• Cause unexpected downtime in case of stringent production deadline

Even in case of regular purchases for every site, the purchase team would incur costs and employ resources that can be better utilized.

Keeping the above listed challenges in consideration there is a need for large global organizations to re-think standardizing of MRO parts naming and leveraging its impact on an overall Inventory Management System. This commonality that deters the efficient operations of a manufacturing/processing facility, thus needs standardized noun modifiers to name the particular spare. These noun modifiers would be pivotal in avoiding confusion and inconsistencies in the legacy system thereby saving a huge capital on the inventory. A comprehensive taxonomy of standard set of Noun Modifier(s) also helps to build a dictionary that can be utilized across locations and also by various functional units.  This would further yield the following benefits

1. Better classification and categorization of parts
2. Eradicating duplication
3. Display exact stock available data in the inventory
4. Plethora of economic benefits