From Human Expertise to a Connected MRO Ecosystem: Building a Scalable Foundation

By Shilpi Chauhan, VP of Business Transformation & Change, RS Integrated Supply

Modern manufacturing runs on thousands of parts, dozens of suppliers, and an unforgiving clock. When a critical asset is down, every minute invites lost output, missed service levels, and rising costs. Yet the day‑to‑day reality of maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) is often fragmented – paper requisitions, email quotes, site‑specific processes, and data that can’t be trusted across locations. The result is predictable: delays, blind spots, and a higher total cost of ownership.

At RS Integrated Supply, we believe the path out of this complexity is an integrated supply model built on two pillars: Fix the Foundations and Enhance Value. It’s how we help organisations move from human heroics to a technology‑enabled ecosystem, without losing the human expertise that makes operations resilient.

Why integrated supply belongs in every transformation plan?

Transformation programs often focus on production systems first: sensors, analytics, and AI at the line. But the MRO supply chain is the connective tissue that determines whether those lines continue operating. When MRO processes are inconsistent, approvals are opaque, and data doesn’t reconcile, the best digital roadmap stalls in the last mile.

An integrated supply approach addresses this by aligning people, process, and data around a single way of working. At RS Integrated Supply, we manage £700M+ in client spend, orchestrate 17,000 suppliers, and connect parts from 37,000 different manufacturers. That scale matters because it provides leverage (in price, service, and lead times), but the true advantage is standardisation: one platform, common workflows, unified data, and clear controls. That’s the foundation for visibility, speed, and governance across sites, regions, and business units.

Pillar 1: Fix the Foundations

You can’t automate chaos. The first step is to stabilise the operating model:

• One platform: Consolidate fragmented tools into a single system of record for requisitions, approvals, ordering, and reporting.
• Standardised ways of working: Harmonise the core process, reduce exceptions, and make roles and handoffs unambiguous.
• Unified data: Define shared data standards for items, suppliers, and sites. Cleanse and connect the data so it can be trusted.

This creates transparency into demand, spend, and performance. With a single source of truth, leaders can answer basic but vital questions:

• What’s our true cycle time?
• Where are the bottlenecks?
• Which parts are driving rush orders and premium freight?

Stabilising the foundation isn’t glamorous, but it’s what makes every subsequent improvement stick.

Pillar 2: Enhance Value

Once the foundations are in place, you enhance value by moving teams from transactional firefighting to proactive decision‑making:

• Automate the routine: Digital workflows remove touches that do not add value, like quoting, approvals, and ordering. That frees talent for high‑impact work.
• Real‑time insights: Operational dashboards illuminate stock risk, supplier performance, and demand patterns. With clean data, forecasting and preventive actions become credible.
• Value‑based relationships: With visibility and standards, suppliers compete on service, quality, and innovation, not just price. Partnerships become strategic rather than tactical.

The outcome is a virtuous cycle: better data enables better decisions, which drive better outcomes, which create more data to optimise further.

Five lessons from the journey

After leading large‑scale programs across diverse industries, we’ve learned five lessons that consistently determine success:

1. People: No outcome without adoption. Co‑design with the sites that live the process every day. Train for the new roles you create and celebrate quick wins to build confidence.
2. Technology: You can’t automate chaos. Establish clear ownership, SLAs, and data definitions before introducing automation or AI. Otherwise, you will scale variability.
3. Process: Simplification creates scale. Every exception you allow today becomes five change requests tomorrow. Prune aggressively. Complexity costs but simplicity travels.
4. Data: Data drives efficiency. Treat data quality as a product with a roadmap. Define a single taxonomy, assign stewards, and measure completeness and accuracy relentlessly.
5. Agility: Progress beats perfection. Pilot, learn, standardise, scale. The goal is steady momentum, not a big‑bang release that collapses under its own ambition.

Proof in practice

For a global life sciences manufacturer, we partnered to stabilise and scale their MRO operating model. By standardising workflows, cleansing data, and digitising key steps, they delivered $2M+ in savings in Year 1, reduced average quotation time by 40%, and achieved Gold status in storeroom operational excellence. The takeaway isn’t just about cost; it’s about speed, predictability, and confidence, the ingredients of reliable production.

A quick self‑assessment

If you’re planning (or recalibrating) your transformation, ask:

• Process readiness: Are your MRO workflows standardised across sites, with clear roles and minimal exceptions?
• Data integrity: Can you trust your item, supplier, and spend data as a single source of truth?
• Automation coverage: What percentage of requisition‑to‑order steps are digitised and automated today?
• Visibility: Can operations, maintenance, and procurement see the same real‑time information to make aligned decisions?
• Governance: Do you have defined controls, KPIs, and data ownership to sustain improvements?
• Change capacity: Have you invested in training, communications, and on‑site champions to drive adoption?

Any gaps you identify don’t mean you’re not ready; they simply identify where to start. The best programs prioritise, deliver quickly, and compound wins.

Getting started

1. Map the current state: Document the end‑to‑end MRO process, including systems, handoffs, and data. Quantify cycle time, touches, and exception rates.
2. Define the target standard: Agree on the minimum viable global process and data model. Limit exceptions to true regulatory or safety needs.
3. Pilot with purpose: Choose a site or category with high impact and motivated stakeholders. Set a short timebox, measure outcomes, and react accordingly.
4. Scale with governance: Create a playbook, assign data stewards, and establish cadence for KPI reviews and continuous improvement.
5. Invest in people: Train for new capabilities, build on‑site champions, and make adoption visible and rewarding.

Transformation is not a single release; it’s a capability. When you fix foundations and enhance value in tandem, integrated supply becomes the engine that sustains reliability and unlocks growth.

Watch the full presentation to see our approach, lessons, and outcomes in detail.
Recording (link coming soon)

About the Author

Shilpi Chauhan is VP of Business Transformation & Change at RS Integrated Supply where she is responsible for shaping and delivering the organisation’s global transformation roadmap – strengthening core foundations, modernising systems and processes, and building an integrated omnichannel experience that enhances value across a global manufacturing client base.