Best Practices for Managing Data Across The MRO Supply Chain

To manage maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) procurement, you need good data. If that data isn’t accurate, or if you don’t have a consistent process in place for its management, the whole supply chain can spiral out of control. You end up with too much of one item and not enough of another – and the result is both downtime and overspend.

This article explores best practices for managing data across the MRO supply chain, demonstrating the benefits that follow when these are in place. It shows that these practices allow integrators and their customers to make data-driven decisions about procurement and inventory management that better serve the organization.

First, however, we need to be clear about why data is so crucial.

Why Accurate Data Matters for Operational Performance

“Data matters everywhere,” says Costanza Campi, Senior Vice President for Procurement at RS Integrated Supply, “but there is usually more clarity with data for direct materials such as raw materials and components that become an integral part of the finished product and can be directly traced to it.

“There’s been less data transparency in the indirect space because historically it’s been seen as less critical. Moreover, MRO data is often fragmented, involving lots of low-spend items that aren’t linked to bills of materials. This makes management more complex.”

This lack of data makes it difficult, if not impossible, for organizations to manage their MRO supply chain efficiently and effectively, as RS Integrated Supply Data Product Manager David Rodriguez sees when he begins working with new customers. “Many facility managers have no idea what is in their storeroom,” he says. “They could have more than they need, sometimes not enough. Sometimes they have different plants buying the same part for different prices, as an example.”

Once best practices for data management are in place, however, businesses can make informed, data-led decisions. “Data management opens up opportunities,” says Campi. “In the short term, it solves problems with stockouts and potential stoppages on the production line. In the long term, it allows for optimization of stock management and standardization. Data management unlocks all these benefits.”

Foundational Best Practice: Good MRO Data Governance

Standardization, Normalization, and Naming Consistency

Where do businesses wanting to unlock these benefits begin?

For a start, you need clean and accurate data, says Campi: “You need to know the manufacturer and the manufacturer part number. Then you can understand what you are purchasing and using. Do I have this part in stock, or do I need to buy it? When do I need to buy, and where from? If you know the manufacturer part number, you can build a supply chain that is reliable. If you don’t know the part, the quantity you need or when you need it, you can’t.”

How do you ensure data is clean and accurate? You need a system that has best practices in data management built in, so these best practices are, by default, standard procedure. This means a system with strong governance policies, including standardized naming conventions for manufacturer names and part numbers, to enforce consistency and therefore accuracy. 

“Standardization and normalization of data is important,” says Rodriguez. “As an example, we standardize the manufacturer name, so you don’t get say three different ways of entering 3M into your system. It’s the same with manufacturers part numbers.

“This helps with sourcing and consolidating spend. It also helps with understanding inventory levels. When you know a part is already available, it can eliminate the need to order the part and reduce potential downtime for the client – therefore it’s beneficial from a financial perspective too.”

How Poor Governance Leads to Data Siloes and Duplication

Senior Vice President of North American Operations Brandon Coombs has seen the problems that can arise when the right system isn’t in place: “Poor data governance is unfortunately common in our industry. Ignoring data governance leads to data siloes, often resulting in duplicated materials and added cost and waste to the process.”

This is a scenario that Shawn Walker, Director of Strategic Accounts at RS Integrated Supply, also witnessed when one new customer came on board. “They had so many different part numbers for plumbers’ tape,” he recalls, “and they were buying it from dozens of different suppliers. The result was inconsistent pricing, an aggregate saving that they were leaving on the table. There was also the time, energy and ultimately money wasted with so much leakage.”

Built-for-Purpose MRO Platform is Essential

The Pitfalls of Free-Text Fields and Manual Data Entry

Given that poor quality data often stems from errors in manual entry, incomplete information, and misuse of free-text fields, a built-for-purpose system that captures all relevant fields and doesn’t rely on unstructured input will also drive best practice.  

“Sometimes the system being used as the point of record may not be designed for what’s needed,” says Coombs. “If you’re storing information in an ERP system that has a certain number of fields, but you want to record a specific bit of data that doesn’t fit elsewhere, such as a compliance certificate for GxP [Good x Practice] reasons, you can end up putting this information in the free text field.”

“Once the free text element comes in, you have people with the right intentions trying to capture information but it’s not in the fields the system is looking for. Having this kind of poor data quality is common.”

How RS SYNC™ and SnapPart® Improve Data Accuracy and Speed

A built-for-purpose platform such as RS SYNC™ avoids this pitfall and offers significant additional benefits, explains Rodriguez. “When onboarding a new client, our implementation team undertakes data collection steps to understand exactly what’s on the shelves and catalogues it,” he says. “RS SYNC™, with SnapPart®, speeds up that process. For instance, if we see a bearing, we can confirm if that exact part already exists in our system using our Global Identification process. If it does, it pulls the data in, thus accelerating data validation steps, which introduces greater operational efficiency.”

Real-Time Visibility Across Sites Enables Better Decisions

Eliminating Information Siloes Between Facilities

Having an integrated system that provides up-to-date, accurate data visibility across sites also brings other advantages. “The ability to see in a joined-up way what they have between sites is really important,” says Coombs. “We can leverage the relationship we have with our supply network or look for alternative suppliers that could provide those parts. You can’t do this effectively if the data is in different buckets all over the place. You need to see it all in a central location.”

Using Dashboards and Analytics to Drive Continuous Improvement

The dashboard and analytics in RS SYNC™ give real-time visibility into usage, inventory levels, spend, and maintenance frequency. “Reports are important to us and to the customer,” says Rodriguez. “If we’re talking to the finance team, they may want to see what’s been spent and where: for example, we’re spending X amount on OEM items. We can also see that as an opportunity to commercialize that data and look for a different brand. We can present some cost improvement opportunities to the customer.”

“Maintenance managers, on the other hand, might want to see details about what line is using what parts. With RS SYNC™, they can see, for example, that one line is repeatedly using X number of bearings. This could indicate a bigger problem with the machine. The Continuous Improvement team can assess the problem and potentially recommend some changes.”

The Cascading Benefits of Clean, Centralized MRO Data

Forecasting, Optimization, and Predictive Insights

Consistent implementation of these best practices in data management leads to strategic outcomes. Clean data allows for more accurate forecasting and inventory optimization by identifying excess, shortage, and usage trends, while aggregated data provides predictive insights that help to anticipate part failures, prevent downtime, and improve budgeting accuracy. With the dashboards, clients can see how data drives decisions and how these decisions are linked to measurable KPIs.

Driving Budget Control, Risk Mitigation, and Cost Avoidance

“With clean data, it gives the client visibility and that enables us to optimize their inventory. Optimizing their inventory, we get to decrease their spend or optimize their spend, reduce duplications and over buying, because we now know what’s where and who has what,” says Walker. “They can make good business decision based on that data. We balance the inventory and therefore increase plant reliability because they have access to the items.”

“The moment you know what you need to buy and you have a price tag linked to it, you can start to have a budget,” says Campi, “whereas that’s a challenge if you don’t know what you’re going to buy or the cost.”

This is not the only advantage, she adds: “There really is a cascade of benefits that you get from data management. Budgeting is one that, from an industry perspective, is an added value. Another is spend avoidance: not actually spending money because you know if a part is in stock and where to find it. Without part classification, you don’t know what you have in stock.

“Another advantage is spend control. The moment you know what to buy, you also know which alternative you might want to introduce or what else you want to buy at the same time because of the set cost of transport. It really unlocks significant benefits that are linked together.

“Identifying the part is a simple starting point that leads to improvements in stock management, forecasting, budgeting, alternative provision, risk mitigation. There really are lots of benefits that cascade from just identifying the parts.”

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