Traditionally maintenance

engineering and production personnel feel reassured when stock holdings of equipment spares are high enough to meet any eventuality. However this is rarely practical as it leads to large stores filled with spare parts that are rarely, if ever used. Holding costs alone make such an approach prohibitive, but the consequences on business operations of having too little spare parts could be equally prohibitive on maintenance.

Having the correct amount of spare parts on stock is difficult to achieve: it requires a balance to be struck between the risks of being out of stock against the costs associated with holding spare parts. ESS Ltd. will work with you to assess the risks and costs associated with spare parts and help you achieve this difficult balance.

Our assessment

Our assessment uses a combination of historical usage information and reliability calculations to recommend the optimum spares holdings. If required, ESS Ltd. using our risk management techniques, can advise you about the layout of your maintenance stores, potential supplier partnerships and logistics arrangements so that a percentage of spare parts need not be held if they can be delivered within an acceptable lead-time allowing an acceptable repair timescale.

This also provides an auditable method of optimising spares holdings.

Our Spare Parts Evaluation

Our Spare Parts Evaluation involves determining the likelihood and historical frequency of equipment failure and the consequences of that failure in terms of safety, environmental impact and plant downtime. This is referred to as ‘Plant Criticality’. Using the Plant Criticality information along with information about the spare item, lead time, cost and cost of holding, a balance of stock holding against downtime risk of plant is established, leading to a recommended spares holding.

From the Resulting Spare Parts Evaluation, ESS Ltd. can deliver:

  • Spares that you have and don’t require
  • A list of spares that you have and need to keep at optimum levels
  • A list of the spares that you should hold, but don’t