Identifying Critical Facility Maintenance Issues in Supply Chain Operations

Fast-paced supply chain management (SCM) initiatives regularly encounter bottlenecks that may prohibit effective and timely product delivery.

These challenges might arise at any level of the supply chain cycle, from planning through sourcing, production, and delivery. Furthermore, any disruptions might have a negative multiplier impact, making the supply chain less efficient overall.

Because the supply chain is so delicate, the facility maintenance staff must assist supply chain managers in staying ahead of possible difficulties by diligently planning for them. Furthermore, maintenance personnel working behind the scenes may guarantee that the entire process runs well from manufacture to delivery.

The following are the most common maintenance issues in supply chain facility management.

Three Significant Supply Chain Facility Maintenance Issues and Potential Solutions
1) Maintaining current levels of productivity
Maintenance was once considered an unnecessary cost center. However, when businesses implement more preventative maintenance practices, they may see that the maintenance role has shifted from a “burden” to a substantial contributor to corporate profit.

Maintenance increases the availability and performance of equipment in the workplace, the physical environment, and any other commercial setting.

On the manufacturing floor, for example, the necessity for maintenance is obvious. The manufacturing process cannot function if the equipment is malfunctioning or running at subpar levels.

The breakdown of equipment is a crucial element that regularly affects the supply chain. Unplanned downtime is expected to cost an industry up to 5% of its production capacity. Furthermore, it reduces manufacturing efficiency by causing the following effects:

Manufacturing process stutter. As a result, only if there are items will there be sales or profit.
Higher resource costs for items such as spare parts and extra pay for maintenance staff who work to repair damaged equipment Products manufactured when a machine was broken but still working that were faulty or incomplete
Fortunately, a well-executed preventative maintenance policy will eliminate or considerably decrease the recurrence of the vast majority of these problems.

Maintenance managers should seek out more proactive maintenance solutions rather than reactive maintenance, which is waiting until equipment fails before repairing it. There are two options: predictive maintenance or a preventative maintenance plan (pre-planned time-based intervention) (condition-based monitoring and intervention).

2) Storage and warehouse
It is normal at many institutions to discover that the artifacts held in its warehouses are worth more than the facility itself. As a result, these items must be safe and secured.

The maintenance division is also responsible for ensuring that any warehouse or storage facility under its control provides an appropriate environment for the storage of produced items and raw materials. They can accomplish this by executing the following steps:

* Maintain the warehouse building properly by fixing leaking roofs, replacing broken window panes, replacing damaged light bulbs, and restoring wobbly shelving, among other things.

Forklifts and other mobile equipment must be kept in excellent working order at all times.
Keep an eye on how safety equipment is utilized and that safety procedures are taken. For example, all emergency exits should be well marked and unobstructed.
Maintain and test firefighting equipment on a regular basis.
Use pest management and preventative hygiene practices.
If the completed goods are perishable or intended for human consumption, further precautions must be taken to guarantee that freezers and other cooling equipment are constantly operational (such as food, beverages, or medicine).
3) Transportation Transportation and fleet management are two additional critical parts of supply chain facility management. Raw materials must be physically carried to a warehouse before completed items can be delivered to the client on schedule.

The maintenance crew goes above and above to provide effective logistics, which includes planning ahead of time. For example, it may appear little, but has anybody investigated if the trucks used to deliver the things are weatherproof? Would the items arrive safely and in good shape if it began to rain on the route to the customer’s location?

Commodities that must be carried under specific circumstances, such as food and cold or frozen items, should also be considered in logistics planning.

However, the temperature must be perfect since various commodities, particularly pharmaceutical goods such as vaccines, pharmaceuticals, and biotech goods, are routinely damaged owing to inadvertent freezing in transportation. Any mistakes committed at this stage have the potential to affect the entire batch and disrupt the supply chain.

As previously stated, every stage of the supply chain process is extremely vulnerable to mistake and delay. However, by collaborating closely with the Facilities maintenance team, the supply chain unit may be able to mitigate many of the implications of these delays before they become an issue.

First Published Here: Supply Chain Operations: Identifying Critical Facility Maintenance Issues