Optimizing MRO Inventory: Strategic Management for Sustainable Growth

Inventory management is a vital process for any type of business. After all, without inventory, production comes grinding to a halt and your business can’t provide the products or services your customers depend on. Inventory for maintenance, repairs, and operating materials, or MRO inventory, is equally important but often overlooked during inventory management.

What is MRO Inventory?

Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO) inventory covers all the inventory your business uses for maintenance, repairs, and operating materials. This could include everything from lightbulbs and office supplies to lubrication and replacement belts. While individually these items aren’t included in your final product, your business also can’t function without them.

Just as with any other type of inventory, MRO inventory management requires forethought, planning, and organizing. This type of inventory is often overstocked, causing overspending and wasting valuable storage space. Worse, when MRO inventory isn’t managed well, items that are used infrequently, such as spare belts or other replacement parts, can simply sit in storage unnecessarily. And if maintenance technicians and other employees don’t know what is in the maintenance storeroom or where to find it, technicians may order even more replacement parts instead of using the parts available in inventory.

MRO Inventory Examples

The broad meaning of MRO inventory means that it includes a wide range of items. These are used all across your company, from the administrative office all the way to the production floor. Here are just a few examples of MRO inventory in manufacturing:

• Office supplies: Pens, notepads, paper, cleaning supplies, printer cartridges
• Spare parts: Ball bearings, gaskets, belts, seals
• Tools and equipment: Hand tools, power tools
• Safety equipment: personal protective equipment such as gloves and goggles, first aid supplies, safety signs
• Facility maintenance: Light bulbs, building maintenance tools, tape measures, paint, cleaning supplies

MRO inventory is used throughout the organization, which also means it is often stored throughout the company. This complicates the management of MRO inventory even further.

How Do You Maintain MRO Inventory?

While MRO inventory management can be challenging, companies can implement procedures to simplify the process and reduce wasted time, money, and storage space.

Start by categorizing the items you already have on hand based on their importance and usage frequency. Items used 10 or more times per month are active parts, items used 1-9 times each month are commodity parts, and items used 1 or fewer times per month are rarely used parts. Prioritize inventory based on how essential each part is for preventing downtime and ensuring safety.

Next, implement an inventory management system to help you track inventory and its usage. This can help you make sure you order replacements when you need them and maintain only the inventory that you need. Your inventory management system should also track where each item is stored, as well as how much inventory is currently in stock.

If your MRO inventory management system is easily accessible to all employees, they’ll be able to find what they need when they need it. Your inventory management system can also help you establish optimal reorder points based on your usage and the suppliers’ lead times. An MRO inventory management software can help you with each part of maintaining an effective and robust inventory. Moving into the era of Industry 5.0, seamless global inventory management across work sites will become common with the power of maintenance software.

MRO Inventory Best Practices

There are a few critical best practices in MRO inventory management:

• Maintain good relationships with suppliers: Cultivate strong relationships with suppliers to ensure favorable delivery times and pricing, avoiding supply chain issues.
• Forecasting demand: Effective forecasting reduces lag time waiting for parts or inventory.
• Organized inventory: Having an effectively organized inventory saves time for employees and reduces machine downtime.
• Continuous improvement: Use historical data to iterate and continuously improve inventory management practices.
• Employee buy-in: Make sure employees are on board with the new inventory practices by making them easy to use and showing your employees how they will benefit.

MRO Inventory Strategy

Managing MRO inventory can be challenging, but it’s certainly not impossible. Using a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) can simplify every aspect of your inventory management, including your MRO inventory.

A CMMS can track each item in your inventory. It uses data analytics to predict when you need to reorder, and you can set reorder points on every piece of inventory. If you have multiple work sites, the CMMS can track inventory across the organization, so you know if one of your other worksites already has a critical spare part. This can minimize downtime and the hassle of emergency parts reordering.

A CMMS optimizes your inventory over time by using your historical data along with your projections. It can integrate with software you’re already using, such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and accounting software and can be accessible to employees and decision makers throughout your organization.

MRO inventory management software simplifies inventory throughout your organization, ensuring your inventory is optimized to avoid unnecessary storage and spending.