Being unable to get your hands on the right part, at the right time, is the…

  • #1 maintenance productivity killer

  • #1 reason for extended equipment downtime

  • #1 driver of maintenance costs

You can significantly reduce this problem with a Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO) Bill of Material (BOM).

An MRO BOM is a list of equipment spare parts. The term BOM is used to refer to several different types of parts lists. The following are some of the most common:

  • OEM BOM: An original equipment manufacturer (OEM) BOM is a complete list of all components and subassemblies used by the original equipment manufacturer to build a piece of equipment.
  • Work Order BOM: A work order BOM is a list of materials required to accomplish the work described in a Work Plan. These materials are normally assigned to planned (PM, rebuilds, etc.) work procedures.
  • Maintenance BOM: A maintenance BOM is a list of materials needed to maintain a specific piece or class of equipment.

BOMs are key to improving maintenance productivity, shortening unplanned downtime, and minimizing MRO material costs.

Building complete and accurate BOMs can do more for an organization than any other type of maintenance MRO initiative. 

Benefits of BOM

  • Improved Part Identification: BOMs allow maintenance personnel (planners, supervisors, and technicians) to quickly and accurately identify required parts for scheduled and unscheduled work orders. Consider the difference between searching a BOM (containing perhaps a few dozen parts) and searching the entire Materials Catalog (containing tens of thousands of parts).
  • Improved Maintenance and Storeroom Efficiency: Accurate parts identification on work orders leads to accurate storeroom pick tickets, which improves the overall efficiency of both maintenance and materials management. For example, if an incorrect part is planned on a work order, the maintenance technician working the job will have to fill out a Material Return Tag for the incorrect part and generate a reservation for the correct part. Materials management personnel will also have to process both additional transactions.
  • Downtime Reduction and Avoidance: BOMs facilitate the critical spare identification process and speed up identification of required spare parts, thus reducing mean time to repair.
  • Increased Maintenance and Storeroom Labor Productivity: BOMs decrease labor time spent scoping, estimating, sourcing, reserving, and requisitioning spare parts.
  • Inventory Reduction: BOMs help identify obsolete materials, eliminate duplicate spare parts, and can suggest minimum stocking levels by establishing the potential need for each spare part.
  • Quality Assurance: BOMs add confidence to the repair process by helping ensure the right part is installed on the equipment—not just the one that fits. BOMs also significantly reduce the possibility of installing the wrong part and possibly causing early and potentially catastrophic equipment failure.
  • Improved Stocking: BOMs are an integral part of stocking strategies. They also help determine if the right part is being stocked.

Tying an asset to its repair materials helps integrate maintenance and inventory management activities. Establishing the link between an asset and its spare parts supports both asset reliability and inventory cost management efforts. In short: complete and accurate BOMs are critical to reducing MRO costs, improving asset reliability, and increasing maintenance productivity. BOMs are the bomb.

Download our BOM procedure from our MRO best practice library. It can help jumpstart and guide your improvement effort.

We help organizations across the globe develop rich and actionable EAM data. If we can help you develop complete and accurate BOMs contact us at info@olddev.swainsmith.com.