Solving the MRO challenge doesn’t take luck
The chance to catch a leprechaun comes once a year. On the night before Saint Patrick’s Day, for hundreds of years now, people have been trying the same strategies, unsuccessfully.
Setting a trap using a piece of gold or a slice of rainbow cake as the bait never seems to work, but if it ever does, remember a simple rule: don’t take your eyes off the leprechaun or he'll disappear.
The industrial world has an elusive leprechaun — eliminating waste from the products and tools that organizations purchase to keep their assets running. Most simply call these consumables MRO for maintenance, repair and operations.
In the United States alone it is estimated that MRO expenditures amount to $115 billion a year. That’s a big pot of gold, and a reason why a strategy for catching the MRO leprechaun, and never letting him go, is so critical.
Creating accountability
A management team may suspect that everyday MRO supplies are being consumed at a higher-than-normal rate, but not have the means to confirm that suspicion with data that shows who was using what.
A technician may come to a manager to say the shop has run out of gloves and needs two more cases. Without having data to prove or disprove this statement, the manager places an order without asking questions only to find out later that some technicians have been throwing away used gloves every night and getting a brand-new pair the next day.
Imagine the manager getting a report on a daily, weekly or monthly basis that tracks MRO spend by employee and by item. Creating accountability for high-value MRO items can generate significant cost reductions, as will accountability for disposable items like cleaning products and masks.
Better yet, imagine a solution that would allow a company’s vendors to automatically replenish its MRO inventory with unattended deliveries and reduce staffing costs by providing access controls for workers to get MRO inventory, 24/7, without supervision.
Controlling MRO access
Industrial facilities such as distribution centers, fleet maintenance shops, manufacturing plants and warehouses now have an option to control access and track MRO inventory of specific items in a secure and seamless manner.
BockLock’s industrial IoT solutions use smart locks to secure MRO inventory in any type of storage unit. The locks are connected to a suite of cloud-based access controls through Wi-Fi or cellular networks for real-time visibility and auditing of inventory.
Tailored for industrial use, BoxLock’s secure and rugged smart locks use integrated barcode scanners. Each worker can each be issued a unique IDs, such as a barcode or a QR code. To open a lock, the worker scans his or her ID and scans the barcodes for each SKU removed from MRO inventory.
BoxLock’s subscription-based SaaS solution integrates with supply chain, operations and materials management systems to provide real-time inventory access, visibility and security. The integration helps make industrial facilities and supply chains more efficient, accountable and reliable wherever and whenever assets are stored or transferred.
MRO is one of many examples of waste that can be driven out of business with technology that controls access to eliminate lost or stolen items and track usage and spend at the worker and SKU level.
While it may never be possible to catch a leprechaun in real life, solving the MRO challenge is being done today with little effort and without needing the luck of the Irish.
To learn more about BoxLock's industrial IoT solutions for MRO in facilities, visit www.getboxlock.com