Every business has silos, and multi-site manufacturing operations are no exception. Even within a single organisation there often exists a large amount of variation across work sites, particularly clustered around data integrity, spare parts needs, and procurement processes. Luckily, many firms are changing how they view multi-site operations and instituting cross-site strategies to reduce overhead in manufacturing operations while promoting strategic alignment and tactical synergies. 

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What is a cross-site strategy for spare parts management?

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A cross-site strategy in spare parts management involves using a spare parts management software to share data and parts between related manufacturing sites. This approach allows for better visibility, improved resource allocation, and more efficient procurement processes across the entire organisation.

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The Role of Spare Parts Management Software

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At the heart of an effective cross-site strategy is robust spare parts management software. This technology serves as a central hub, connecting multiple manufacturing sites and enabling seamless data sharing and spare parts management. Here's how it contributes to the success of a cross-site strategy:

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1. Data Integrity: The spare parts management software ensures that all sites work with the same, up-to-date information. This consistency eliminates discrepancies and reduces the risk of errors in inventory management and procurement.
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2. Spare Parts Planning: By taking all available spare parts data and using advanced usage algorithms, a spare parts management software offers a reliable overview of how often spare parts are used and when to order more. 
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3. Spare Parts Pooling: With a clear overview of inventory across all sites, organisations can implement effective spare parts pooling. This means that spare parts can be shared between sites as needed, reducing overall inventory levels and associated costs.
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4. Streamlined Procurement: By consolidating procurement activities, companies can leverage their buying power more effectively. This often leads to better pricing, improved supplier relationships, and more efficient purchasing processes for manufacturing operations.
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Data Integrity and Cleaning for Spare Parts Management

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Many multi-site manufacturing operations and maintenance teams use their own internal, experience-based spare parts classification systems. These ad hoc methods work locally but create challenges when interfacing with company-wide enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems like SAP.

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The result is a fragmented inventory with numerous duplicate spare parts, labeled differently across various sites. This inconsistency leads to costly confusion, inventory errors, and procurement complications.

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A cross-site strategy with a centralised spare parts management software resolves these issues by establishing a unified, company-wide spare parts classification approach. Such a digital system prevents duplicate entries, ensures data integrity, and creates a single source of truth. Employees across all locations can now use a consistent, customisable spare parts classification system, effectively eliminating site-specific variations and communication barriers.

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Spare Parts Planning

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When talking with customers, it’s clear that most firms operate on a plant-by-plant basis. Each plant has its own parts usage rates, reorder points, and ways of doing things. A cross-site strategy tears down these silos, complementing individual strategies with a broader, longer-term outlook. Instead of calculating and accounting for numerous requests for the same part, a cross-site strategy enables firms to understand which and how many parts are required overall for manufacturing operations. This is a critical improvement, both from a financial perspective and from a logistical one. It makes firms more resilient to disruptions and can help mitigate unplanned downtime, while also allowing for more accurate and comprehensive budgeting. 

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Spare Parts Pooling

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Another benefit of a cross-site strategy is the overview and availability of spare parts company-wide. Previously, each plant would have their own spare parts inventory and stock, to be used as-needed for their equipment. Each plant operated independently, and if an emergency malfunction required a spare part that they didn’t have, they were out of luck. As time went on, some multi-site operations began communicating with one another for ad hoc requests, calling or emailing each other to borrow the occasional sparepart. While effective in the short term, sharing spareparts like this makes it hard to keep inventories accurate and to adequately monitor part usage. There’s also no guarantee that a plant will have the part another needs, or that the plants even define the part by the same name or attributes. 

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With a centralised cross-site strategy and an appropriate spare parts management software in place, this whole process gets an efficient makeover. Now, instead of calling another manufacturing plant, waiting for them to check their own spare part inventories, and then coordinating how to transfer the spare part, you simply go to your spare parts management software. If everything is adequately set up, the inventory levels at each site should be easily accessible, so you know immediately who has parts to spare. You can digitally put in a request for the spare part, and when it’s fulfilled, the inventory levels are automatically adjusted. This removes unknown elements from the internal spare parts procurement process, saving valuable time, increasing data integrity, and allowing for easier cross-site collaboration.

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Ideally, this process becomes integrated into procurement processes, so that spare parts can be sourced internally before new parts must be ordered. It’s an easy win towards reducing unnecessary expenses, as many manufacturing operations have both over- and under-stocked spare parts inventories across plants simultaneously. 

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Spare Parts Procurement 

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Speaking of spare parts procurement, understanding your spare parts situation across mutli-site manufacturing operations is a key element in streamlining procurement procedures. In our experience, spare parts procurement is typically managed locally in plants. When working with customers, it's not uncommon to see price differences of >50% for the same spare part across different plants, even in Europe.

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When a unified cross-site strategy is implemented, spare parts procurement processes can be easily restructured to be more efficient and cost-effective. To start, procurement teams have a better overview of the entire network’s future spare parts needs, allowing them to place larger orders of the same spare parts. At the same time, the procurement department can use their spare parts management software to review all current parts requests, instead of individuals requesting small orders of specific spare parts. With this knowledge, they can combine the smaller, specific orders into larger requests with their suppliers. Lastly, procurement departments can purchase spare parts wherever it’s cheapest within the network, granting even more savings. 

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Benefits at a glance

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1. Cost Reduction: By optimising inventory levels and leveraging collective buying power, organisations can significantly reduce costs associated with spare parts management.
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2. Improved Maintenance Efficiency: With better visibility and availability of parts across sites, maintenance teams can respond more quickly to issues, reducing downtime and improving overall equipment effectiveness.
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3. Enhanced Decision Making: Access to comprehensive data from all sites enables better-informed decisions about inventory levels, supplier selection, and maintenance strategies.
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4. Standardisation: A cross-site approach encourages standardisation of spare parts and processes across different locations, leading to improved quality control and simplified training procedures.
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5. Increased Resilience: By sharing resources across sites, organisations become more resilient to supply chain disruptions or unexpected demand spikes at individual locations.

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Conclusion

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For multi-site operations or larger firms with many plants, a cross-site strategy is an efficient and effective way to streamline manufacturing operations and reduce costs. It’s an interdepartmental tool that will pay off in a variety of ways, so long as it is intelligently implemented. Though there many methods to achieving these benefits, a spare parts management software is the simplest, most robust, and most comprehensive way towards reducing silos and bolstering effective collaboration. 

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