See us at MAINTEC 2010:

Stand F4 - Hall 11 - NEC, Birmingham – Tuesday 2nd March - Thursday 4th March

ERIKS UK has launched a new service to reorganise and optimise engineering stores, called Storeroom Services. ERIKS has the expertise and technical product knowledge to enable it to project manage a full storeroom move, or transformation, from initial review through to full product re-organisation and software installation.

With Storeroom Services contracts ranging from £5,000 to £500k ERIKS is able to find significant savings in virtually any size of engineering stores. The service has saved tens of thousands of pounds for companies as wide ranging as national aerospace companies to global food manufacturers.

Engineering stores are notoriously difficult to maintain efficiently, or move from one place to another; often hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of stock is held, with many items becoming redundant before they are used. Inefficient stores can have serious implications for a company's bottom line, with over-stocking due to a lack of information, hard to find maintenance items affecting uptime, and an undefined cost base sitting on-the-shelf. There are also basic health and safety implications to disorganised engineering stores.

ERIKS Storeroom Services solutions offer:  Greater spending control.  Greater value for money.  Greater return on assets.  Improved parts availability.  Enhanced stores function.  Improved maintenance, repair and operations efficiency.  More effective resource management.  Greater compliance with the supply chain.  Enhanced leverage with suppliers.  Improved working environment.

An engineering storeroom that is inefficient can affect a company on many levels: Production up-time may be affected by the quality of stores and the availability of replacement stock. Finance managers may also have no way of tracking individual stock items and their cost. Engineering managers may not have the visibility they need to understand usage patterns and better control their budget.

While it may be clear to a large number of staff that storeroom management presents a problem, it is less clear how to begin to develop an efficient stock management system. Fortunately ERIKS now offers an end-to-end Storeroom Service, the only industrial products and services company to provide this.

How the services work

ERIKS will carry out an initial inspection of the site’s engineering stores and identify areas for improvement. This leads to a proposal detailing the remedy and the benefits that the project will deliver to the client.

Projects often focus on the identification of all the products in stock, registering any cases of over or under stocking and help with the identification of any obsolete items. Once the stock has been checked, it is audited to determine the value of the stock holding, allowing accurate balance sheet entries where needed.

After stock identification the storeroom is sorted and a stock location system is created that allows products to be held in an efficient and safe manner, making stock checks easier and providing quick access when needed. Items are arranged by size and product type, and in the case of OEM specials, by machine type. Fast moving items are located closer to the point of issue, and in some cases dedicated “kitting” areas are created to allow pre-determined lists of parts to be assembled prior to issue.

One important process in creating an efficient store is ensuring that the size of the physical area is appropriate. ERIKS Storeroom Services will assess the current storage rooms and may recommend installation of additional shelving or even moving the engineering stores to a new location. ERIKS Storeroom Services are able to project manage any potential changes completely, negating the need to secure additional project management services or tie-up valuable time from within the clients management team.

As well as physical holdings, it is important to keep data organised and updated in order to run an efficient stores. The ERIKS Storeroom Services team can remove duplication and error in records and insure that valuable information, such as supply source and price, is included. This delivers an accurate depiction of the stock held on-site and creates a high level of transparency in the supply chain.

Finally, new Process Maps can be created to document any changes that have been agreed to the way the stores operates. ERIKS ensures that all changes are implemented and any necessary installations are completed. To reinforce these processes, ERIKS also offers staff training programmes to ensure that the new systems are understood and maintained.

Example

ERIKS has recently worked with a large client in the North West that had identified the need to run its stores more efficiently. During the initial on-site visit, Storeroom Services were able to identify a number of key problems within the plant’s stock management system and created a plan which helped the plant start to find savings immediately.

It was found that the plants problems could be attributed to the manner in which the stock was stored. The products were held in the open in main storerooms which meant they were susceptible to dust contamination. The stock was not held with associated product types and critical spares were indistinguishable from standard stocked lines. In all, a poor visual management system had made finding and identifying stock extremely difficult.

Using ERIKS know how, Storeroom Services were able to identify areas where additional storage facilities could be established which were free from contamination risk. The new stores are stocked in product size and type order with simple visual management of the critical machine spares. In order to ensure that stock-holdings are kept at an efficient level a traffic light system has been introduced to highlight low stock levels.

ERIKS is the only industrial products and services company to use its expertise in organising and managing storerooms to provide an end-to-end storeroom service. As a result of its work the risks of stock-out and product contamination have been virtually eliminated, reducing the risk of costly downtime and having to replace damaged stock items. In total, stock holdings have been reduced by £97,000 (22% of total value); min/max reviews saving £69,000 and obsolete products saving £28,000.

About ERIKS UK

We offer over 90 years technical knowledge and experience from 76 nationwide industrial service centres, supplying over 500,000 unique industrial products. We have 68 integrated on site stores and procurement centres reducing the costs of all maintenance and repair products and industrial services. With 9 core competence centres and 23 fully equipped repair workshops maintaining equipment from electric motors, pumps, gearboxes, generators, transformers through to condition monitoring based preventative maintenance services, such as thermography, air leak surveys and vibration analysis.

Editor Contact

DMA Europa : Roland Renshaw
Tel: +44 (0)1299 405454 Fax: +44 (0)1299 403092
Web: www.dmaeuropa.com
Email: roland@dmaeuropa.com

Company Contact

ERIKS UK : Richard Ludlam
Tel: +44 (0)121 508 6000 Fax: +44 (0)121 508 6255
Web: www.eriks.co.uk
Email: Richard.Ludlam@eriks.co.uk