Top Parts Inventory Management Software: Boost Efficiency & Reduce MTTR

#1 Parts & Inventory Management Software2026-01-09T12:06:35-05:00

Manage Spare Parts Quickly & Optimize Your Parts Inventory

Manage your spare parts, monitor your
inventory levels, and reduce your mean time
to repair (MTTR) with the top-rated software from Fluke.

150,000+
USERS

116
COUNTRIES

7,400+
MAINTENANCE TEAMS HELPED

3.4 Million
MACHINES FIXED

Spare parts management is easy with eMaint CMMS.

With the right parts inventory management software, you can be confident your team is equipped with the parts they need and discover how to minimize spend while maintaining your inventory.

Be ready for unplanned downtime — when critical spares make the difference between crises averted and costly shutdowns.

• Gives you an organized, searchable, spare parts inventory

• Simplifies the balancing act of having the right spares on hand, and reducing unnecessary costs

• Connects your team to a global maintenance storeroom with multi-site parts management, and readies you to report on parts assignments across the enterprise.

We want to hear from you: what’s your biggest challenge? Learn how eMaint CMMS can help.

Simplify Parts Inventory Management with eMaint

Quickly locate and assign parts to work orders. Oversee parts inventory management and spending. Book parts in the field and offline with the mobile app.

You’re busy. Let eMaint take care of the spare parts management madness.

Spare parts at the ready

Track your spare parts, search for what you need, and easily assign to work orders. Make sure critical spares are on hand for emergencies. Your view is configurable – drag & drop columns, edit labels, and personalize your workspace.

Get inventory just right: always in stock, never out of budget

Optimize your inventory levels to prevent both shortages of critical spares and overspending on unnecessary inventory. The eMaint Parts Reorder List notifies you when parts dip below your set limits. Gain visibility on slow-moving parts orders and plan accordingly.

Our mobile app makes life easy

Manage work orders, view asset info, and book spare parts on the go with the eMaint mobile app. Take a photo of a machine failure in the field, upload it, and submit a work request – then, book relevant parts to get the job done. Work offline, your updates syncing automatically once a connection is re-established.

“We felt eMaint was a good partner… Being coupled with Fluke, eMaint provides a solid solution through their products and vast experience in asset management.”

Frank Lanno, OpEx Director for Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope

Simple, Drag & Drop Maintenance Scheduling for Parts Inventory Management

Manage parts assignments, work orders, and preventive maintenance with an intuitive, interactive calendar.

Eliminate the hours spent planning, cross-referencing availability, and scratching your head over schedule conflicts.

Streamlined planning: save time & make sure work is assigned

Manage and plan out maintenance. Schedule PMs to trigger based on equipment usage or asset health data. Ensure your team has the right parts for the job.

Easy, drag & drop PM calendar

Map out work orders and PMs with the eMaint Scheduler, and intuitive, interactive calendar. Assign work quickly. Make sure your assignments, schedules, and spare parts availability work in harmony.

Automatically see and resolve conflicts

Learn of schedule conflicts ahead of time with notifications, so you can resolve them right away. Get notified of overscheduling. Optimize your maintenance planning by level-loading work distribution and planning ahead for spare parts needs.

“My favorite thing about eMaint is probably the usability of the software. eMaint provides a quick, easy, user-friendly way to access data, create reports, and really tailor the data that you’re collecting to what the organization’s needs are.”

Nick Torgerson, Facilities Maintenance Manager

Our Global Maintenance Storeroom Has Your Back

eMaint unites your inventory across worksites, giving you access to more parts and powerful visibility.

A critical asset goes down, and the spare you need is missing. Thankfully, you have eMaint.

Get what you need quickly in emergencies

Request and share spare parts across worksites in multi-site businesses. Discover if other sites have key critical spares when you need them right away and face costly downtime.

Your parts inventory command center

Manage spare parts across the enterprise. Send reqs, POs, and charges between sites. View and analyze inventory levels in individual storerooms, across regions, or throughout the organization.

Simple reporting drives powerful changes

Report on spare parts inventory with easy-to-use analytics and dashboards. Build enterprise-level reports, streamlined thanks to data standardization. Discover trends in parts charges, inventory levels, MTTR, and more maintenance KPIs that can improve strategy across the business.

Seamless Purchasing & ERP Integration for Your Parts Inventory Management System

Say goodbye to data entry errors, dueling inventory systems, and complex, costly integrations

Simplified integration that unites MRO & finance

eMaint brings MRO and purchasing or finance teams together. Connect to 1000+ apps, including ERP platforms like SAP, Oracle NetSuite, or Sage Intacct. Trust in the helpful eMaint API or rely on eMaint’s low-code, iPaaS integration offering.

Track & update your inventory across software

Automatically update inventory data between eMaint and your ERP. Get rid of data entry errors. Eliminate miscommunications and confusion over maintenance vs. financial records.

Easy purchase reqs, POs, and charges

Route purchase requisitions and orders from maintenance to inventory or accounting, ensuring financial traceability for your maintenance work. Build workflows between eMaint and your accounting system to strengthen visibility on labor costs. Send parts reqs directly to purchasing to speed up process in maintenance emergencies.

Frequently Asked Questions for Parts Inventory Management Software

What is Parts Inventory Management?

Parts inventory management has always been a critical and complex challenge. Having the right part in the right quantity at the right time and in the right place requires planning, precision, and balance.

Spare parts management (SPM) is about knowing the quantity, place, and time of replenishing spare parts to achieve operational efficiency and performance reliability. The scope of spare parts management refers to all processes between the supplier and the point of use in which technicians swap out stock items to repair or substitute for defective parts.

Because parts are consumed to maintain assets in service, organizations will have to work within their budget to maximize availability times and prolong the quality of goods. Today, many maintenance teams are turning to spare parts inventory management software to optimize their storeroom operations.

How Do I Use a CMMS for Spare Parts Inventory?

The parts inventory management system tools offered by an effective computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) are a vital part of running a successful maintenance storeroom. eMaint’s spare parts inventory management software simplifies tracking parts across storerooms worldwide and helps improve inventory accuracy. Organizations can set-up reorder points to track parts and auto-generated purchase orders.

With a CMMS, you can eliminate data entry and duplicate data with barcoding. Use barcodes and QR codes to scan and view part records instantly on a tablet or mobile device, and your team can use parts kitting to issue or return multiple parts with a single item number.

5 Techniques for Better Parts Inventory Management Strategy

1. Categorize your parts inventory

• Active parts inventory (10 or more used each month)
• Commodity parts (1 or more used each month)
• Rarely used parts (fewer than 1 used each month)

When stocking spare parts inventory, consider factors including lead time, consumption rate, the costs associated with storage, and the potential costs and consequences that would be incurred if you did not have a needed part.

1. Set agreed-upon spare parts stocking and reorder points

This can help you avoid a feast-or-famine scenario where you have excessive spare parts inventory — or not enough. Standardize your methods for determining when and whether to stock a part — and in what quantity. Using consistent criteria to make parts inventory decisions can streamline the process, make it easier to identify priorities, and make communicating decisions easier.

1. Improve your supply chain management

Materials providers, shipping partners, and other parties directly impact your spare parts inventory. Though you cannot singlehandedly eliminate supply chain issues, you can take steps to optimize your relationships with your suppliers and shippers. Good two-way communication is essential. Track lead times using a spare parts inventory management software to identify potential slowdowns or bottlenecks.

1. Use data to drive parts inventory decisions

Start with usage probabilities and optimize your parts inventory over time. Spare parts inventory management software goes beyond spreadsheets to integrate with other tools, reduce manual data entry, and make tracking easier and more accurate.

1. Ensure inventory accuracy

Conduct a cycle count to match your physical parts inventory with your inventory records. Cycle counting is a method designed to fit into your normal operations. A parts inventory software solution makes accurately tracking your inventory easier.

There are multiple inventory accounting methods. A first in, first out (FIFO) strategy is important if your inventory includes any parts or products that have limited shelf lives, such as chemicals or pharmaceutical ingredients. Track all of their expiration dates in parts inventory software to avoid spoilage.

Material management is a storeroom technique for parts inventory management. It governs how organizations plan, organize, and control the flow of materials from purchase to delivery. The mission of any materials management program is to keep the right parts in the right quantity, at the right location and time, with the right level of quality at the lowest possible cost.

What Are Roles for Inventory Parts Management?

The purpose of the maintenance storeroom is to house materials in a safe, clean, secure, and organized environment. As a result, three primary aspects make up the materials management process:

• Acquisition – Parts procurement (right parts, right quantity, right quality, lowest total cost)
• Control – Stores
• Movement – Logistics (right place, right time)

Planners generally trigger materials requisitions, determining the specific materials needed. They determine items, quantities, and dates for each work order. Procurement personnel is responsible for ordering exactly what the planner needs from approved vendors. Vendors provide parts that meet prescribed specifications. After delivery, personnel properly handle and control items in the warehouse area until needed in the field. At that point, logistics personnel arrange materials movements to the final destination.

In most organizations, maintenance storeroom personnel complete material movement, which means that Logistics and Stores are the same teams. Stores teams embed in the middle of the material flow, so they can affect every one of the elements of the mission.

What Are Parts Management Best Practices?

A parts management strategy can be visualized as a pyramid of hierarchy where a goal is defined and methods are selected, to organize the stockrooms, free up storage space, and account for every item.

Although this method can be costly, spare parts inventories should not be dismissed in favor of reducing industrial costs.

Conduct a Needs Assessment
Before purchasing any parts, pair registered items to specific maintenance activities based on the lead time and consumption data reported by technicians.

Implement a PM Approach
PM is useful for finding the root cause of failures with an option to add excess parts storage to signed-off work orders. A standardized workflow improves the accuracy of inventory counts.

Utilize Effective Inventory Controls
Create a check-out system to recall which parts were stocked or removed on what date while reviewing them periodically for signs of excess or shortage amounts. Distinguish between mission-critical and secondary functions to issue the right quantity of components.

Secure Your Maintenance Stockroom
Better security would promote floor safety where badges are required for entry and employees are trained to pack items into the proper containers.

When following the best practices, a parts management program is a cost-saving strategy to deter downtime and other unexpected incidents.

What Are Potential Pitfalls of Parts Management in the Maintenance Storeroom?

There are a few unsuspected difficulties when managing a maintenance storeroom. These pitfalls include having the wrong parts in the wrong quantity, parts in the wrong place, delivered at the wrong time, and/or in unacceptable condition. Costs can increase significantly as well. In other words, to avoid these issues and successfully set up and maintain a storeroom, all team members must fulfill their roles and execute their responsibilities consistently and accurately.

How to Establish a Spare Parts Management System?

An SPM system is a set of guidelines to identify, procure, control, and dispose of spare parts. This is put into action by inventory management software, a tool that streamlines data collection and labor efficiency measures.

Other than classifying spares by criticality, it’s equally important to designate their installations by the manufacturer or model. Even on new equipment, spare parts must be linked to an asset type and added to the inventory control system. A bin and slot location should be assigned to each part to consolidate storage areas.

Use a bill of materials to simplify work order generation by making it easier to order spare parts. This will save the maintenance team time waiting for parts to be delivered after a request gets issued. Combine this with CMMS software to measure KPIs and report on asset conditions according to Spare Parts Management processes.

Determine what volume to stock by assessing the lead times for machines in descending priority. Are there other vendors that supply a particular component? Consider revising the holding policy if the cycle count shows a usual line item vs. turnover rate during an audit of different inventory portions.

What Are Benefits of Parts Management?

Parts management enables an organization to be proactive about stocking inventories efficiently so they can forecast which parts are necessary to continue operating the plant.

This includes collecting information on first or last-time buys, repairable spares, and purchase histories, to decide when to set a re-order point or assess the end-of-life status. An example would be checking the warehouse levels weekly to reorder top-up replacements.

SPM provides a structured framework for what parts are stored and selected, followed by how much quantity to hold, relying on the bill of materials and barcode scanning to count their availability in a storeroom.

Parts management brings together asset performance, cost reduction, and risk mitigation into a system designed for maximizing the ROI on every piece of equipment. It works through multiple avenues from consistent service delivery to labor utilization to improve productivity over time.

What is the Cost of Spare Parts Inventory?

Even with all the benefits, spare parts have a price tag attached to them. Holding onto spare components could mean buying another room or raising the utility bill, thus adding another item to the accounting books. Because new parts don’t last forever, it’s best to consume them during scheduled maintenance so the employees aren’t stuck moving or cleaning them.

But if spares are unavailable, then the factory has to scramble to meet its equipment demands, where a shortage could disrupt the maintenance process flow, and a surplus would pile up in the backrooms to depreciate over time. To manage the risk of downtime, they must discard poor-quality parts and eliminate redundant orders to remove any obsolete items.

Why Do Industrial Facilities Need Spare Parts Management?

A manufacturer could have large complexes filled with thousands of stock-keeping units. It becomes a chore to track KPIs on the value of stock and recyclable materials per warehouse. This can have an impact on critical operations such as emergency work orders and delivering MRO supplies.

They’ll need a system that’s fit for purpose, to weigh the probability against the cost of needing a part, and plan what quantity to order when market demand continues to vary. That’s why many enterprises are investing in a parts management system–to determine the optimal inventory levels to hit on each category.

The ideal solution is to run CMMS or EAM software with built-in ERP functionality, to automate the maintenance process flow, for drilling down into inventory logistics where the location and unit cost are clearly labeled. It will make the re-order data accurate on expensive assets that occupy 20% or less of your inventory but take up 80% of the value by lead time.

What Are Critical Success Factors for a Parts Management Strategy in Your Storeroom?

• Physical planning
• Infrastructure – The condition of the maintenance storeroom facility itself is a fundamental challenge — a storeroom in poor condition risks exposure to the elements, which can degrade the quality of the materials.
• Location – Too much distance between the storeroom and end-users can cause delays, damaging or losing items in transit.
• Accessibility – Based on assessments, as many as half of all maintenance departments have an “open” storeroom plan, where the “honor system” is in effect. Educate your employees on adequate controls and procedures. Above all, put controls in place to handle, manage, and check-out materials properly.
• Physical layout – Optimal materials flow is crucial to the ideal storeroom. The factors of an ideal setup include the ability to move material quickly between areas and the ability to move material effectively within each area.

What is Process Planning for the Maintenance Storeroom?

Standardization – Every maintenance storeroom needs to be standardized. In other words, you decide how items will be organized. Is it from left to right or right to left? Top to bottom or bottom to top? Do you place labels above or below? Is this set up the same throughout the storeroom? Is it the same between storerooms?

Visual Management – Providing large visible signage to mark different sections will save time and make the process more efficient. Once a worker has looked up which row and aisle a part is located from the VIN system, markers such as signs and arrows will help guide them to it in the actual storeroom. Labeled maps or diagrams of the floorplan can also be useful designating areas.

What is Spare Parts Management?

Maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) inventory are the supplies used to maintain facilities, plants, manufacturing lines, and more. Organizations can increase productivity, decrease downtime, reduce spending on parts, and boost production. It also allows organizations to easily manage parts inventory across multiple locations. They can track it using FIFO, LIFO, or moving average accounting methods.

The right parts inventory management software handles purchasing and receiving parts, associating parts with assets and PMs, and quickly locating inventory items. It can also integrate with other tools and simplifies tracking. Visibility of spare parts inventory is vital for any organization. Without the proper CMMS system, keeping track of parts and ensuring their availability can be challenging.

Save Time Locating Parts

Access all parts information in a list view, including location, on-hand amount, unit cost and item number. Attach images to part records for easy identification.

Reduce Expedited Shipping Costs

Set up reorder points to track parts you need to order or auto-generate a purchase order when the on-hand amount falls below the threshold.

Streamline Parts Issuing Process

Relate parts to assets and PMs in order to automatically let technicians know which parts are typically used to repair an asset or perform a PM task.

Eliminate Data Entry & Duplication

Use barcodes and QR codes to scan and view part records instantly on a tablet or mobile device. Use parts kitting to issue or return multiple parts with a single item number.

Gain Control over Your Inventory

Require work requestors to submit a materials request for approval before a part is charged out of inventory.

What is Supplier Management?

Not only can you manage your parts within eMaint’s inventory management system, you can also manage your suppliers. Throw away your spreadsheets and address books! Managing your suppliers’ contact information and the parts they supply is now made easy.

Make Data-Driven Decisions

View and track parts by supplier in a list view. It can show the supplier name, part number, last part cost, last received date and more.

What is Parts Purchasing and Requisitioning?

In eMaint, you can track parts and manage parts suppliers, so why not take it a step further and purchase the parts, too? With eMaint’s purchasing solution, organizations can create and receive Purchase Orders (POs), track purchases and run purchasing reports.

Ensure Necessary Parts are On-Hand

Create purchase orders right from on a list of parts that are due to be reordered based on parts reorder points.

Monitor Parts Ordered

With eMaint’s requisitioning tool, technicians must receive approval of all requests to purchase parts before a purchase order is created.

Keep a Log of PO Receipts

Track parts received and record valuable information, such as packing slip details, required date, item location and more.