MRO products are supplies utilized in the production process, but are not ultimately part of the end product. These items may include:

1. Industrial equipment (gear motors, spare parts, valves, compressors pumps, etc.)
2. Consumables such as cleaning and office supplies
3. Computers, sensors, measuring monitoring equipment
4. Plant upkeep supplies (lubricants, gaskets and repair tools)

Often underappreciated, MRO items are critical to keeping supply chains running smoothly. Failure to effectively manage MRO often has ripple effects upstream and downstream. Contrarily, businesses with well managed MRO processes are better positioned to meet (and exceed) time-bound customer demands while driving cost efficiencies.

Traditional Approach & Challenges

The importance of MRO supply chains is often magnified for asset-intensive industries like Oil & Gas, Utilities, Water Desalination, Aerospace, Airlines and select groups of complex industries such as Petrochemicals. The complexity of these supply chains increases exponentially for large organizations managing inventory for hundreds of thousands, or even millions of unique MRO items.

Traditional management of MRO supply chains typically involves cross-departmental coordination spanning:

1. Maintenance Planning and Scheduling
2. Procurement Activities
3. Inventory Management
4. Field Maintenance Execution

Forecasting accurate needs based on comprehensive consumption tracking represents the top challenge for MRO supply chains.

Many organizations rely on inventory management systems to derive data insights but don’t have sufficient ongoing audit processes to ensure accuracy. Having incorrect lead times, safety stock levels or re-order points generates inaccurate replenishment volumes, resulting in slow moving inventory / direct purchases, and stock-outs of critical items.

For more complex MRO supply chains, it is common to see low productivity in the field due to poor planning and item shortages.

SCAS Solution

By eliminating the need for separately generated consumption forecasts, AP&I fundamentally changes the MRO supply chain management model. Receiving continuous feeds of consumption data (at most detailed levels of granularity), in addition to maintenance schedules, inventory and supplier performance data, AP&I is capable of autonomously running the MRO supply chain. In doing so; accurately generating replenishment orders for all applicable MRO supply items as well as optimizing inventory levels for each of these items across all applicable warehouses.

This results in minimum inventory and downtimes, resulting in maximum availability, and increased customer satisfaction.