What are maintenance repair and operations? These are market places that allow businesses to buy and sell consumables and other essential materials, including office equipment supplies, e.g., staples, stationery, etc. Although these materials’ cost might be negligible, American companies spend huge amounts of money running into billions buying things like staplers and more. Because of this, a business organization needs an effective maintenance, repairs, and operations strategy.
Examples of MRO marketplace may include:
You may find a marketplace for small businesses in construction and manufacturing, selling a wide range of national, regional, and local home and industrial hardware supplies. The products may range from wheelbarrows to compressors. On this platform, buyers can request quotes through the RFQ system (a request for a quotation) to purchase a particular product or service. Other services that may be available are e-commerce, funding, leasing, and reduced shipping services by third-party distribution.
Another example is a marketplace that focuses on facility managers at real estate management companies, real property investment, and other real estate proprietors and vendors. They buy in large quantities from leading suppliers or distributors and resell at a mark-up to the end-user. They may get involved in building online acquisition for customers.
Here are simple strategies for managing your MRO process.
1. Bridge the Gap between Procurement and Maintenance
Since the maintenance and procurement departments function differently but for the same overall company’s goals, department heads need to communicate consistently. It becomes essential if a third-party service provider is part of the supply chain.
Different departments need to be open with each other regarding their part requirements, sourcing requests, and extra information. They also should pay attention to customers’ requests and understand what the driving factors are.
2. Venue for Strategic Decisions
The MRO store, which receives, stocks, issues, and tracks spare parts and other materials, is ideal for the discussions. Here, departmental professionals can identify bottlenecks that usually occur during the MRO process. To make the discussions fruitful, departments should identify and establish a best-practice parts requirement process.
3. Define Your Process
To minimize inefficiencies in the supply chain management, define and document the procedures ranging from purchasing orders, invoicing, dealing with vendors, following up with customers to pricing and shipping. However, because many people are involved in MRO, delays are likely to happen. You may minimize these setbacks by letting your service provider be actively involved through the whole process to engage both the maintenance and procurement departments.
4. Monthly Reporting Calls
Encourage face to face meetings or video conference calls among the management, procurement, operations, and maintenance divisions. Through these conversations, your company will clear any misunderstandings or misconceptions.
It’s also advisable to use a scorecard that contains program savings, safety, inventory, storeroom items, repair savings, etc. Track and measure them over a period of months to see if there is a department and performance decline. Finally, each division needs to commit to the company’s plans to make MRO effective and efficient.