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Supply Chain Supporting Operations and Maintenance
Aligning your Supply Chain to unencumber Operations and Maintenance Administration
The best way to unencumber Operations and Maintenance in an asset-intensive organisation is to align key support processes such as Supply Chain Management with your operational and asset management strategy and related tactics.
A few of the problems we have learned about and resolved in this area are outlined below, but the real number is far, far too many for a short post here.
Users were bogged down using multi-screen feature/function ERPs for simple admin tasks like raising purchase and work requisitions, work orders, direct purchases, timesheets, stock checks, and approvals, etc instead of a single persona-based UI/UX that has a low cognitive load
Parts weren’t aligned with Assets during Master Data establishment; hence inventory levels increased
Maintenance planners continued to see stock-outs when planning and scheduling work, and hence work had to be delayed
Management of change processes just didn’t work and assets had the wrong supporting reference material, the wrong parts, and the wrong maintenance and operating cycles, and again, inventory increased as obsolete parts were not disposed of
The cycle time for payment obligations or stock replenishment was in some cases inflexible, outside contractual obligations, not costed correctly, and notifications of delivery were unknown; all mainly due to frustrations and complex or inappropriate procedures; all these resulted in a large creditor liability, an ever-increasing work order backlog, continuous Supplier complaints about late payment, cash management implications for treasury, CAPEX project overruns due to delays
Life expectancy of Assets was reduced or not able to be analysed correctly due to misleading or insufficient storage and usage demand data.
All of these problems and many, many more disappeared with the introduction of salient Diriger AI, ML, standardised business rules, simpler User interfaces, and clear lines of authority and delegation of both OPEX and CAPEX acquisitions.
