Open the maintenance store in most Indian SME factories and you will find two things simultaneously: parts you desperately needed last month and could not find, and parts that have been sitting on the shelf for three years with no machine left to put them in.
Spare parts management sits at the intersection of maintenance and procurement, which means it often falls between the cracks of both. Nobody owns it fully, so it is managed reactively, buy when you run out, stock what feels important, and discover the gaps when a machine is already down.
The cost of this approach adds up faster than most factory owners realise.
Where the money is going
When a machine goes down and the part is not in stock, someone makes a phone call. If the local supplier has it, you pay whatever they ask, typically 30 to 80% above the negotiated rate. If they do not, you wait for courier delivery at express rates. In a 50-machine factory running three shifts, one or two of these purchases per month is normal. The cumulative cost over a year is significant and almost never visible in any single line item.
Every Indian factory has a maintenance store with parts bought "just in case" that have not moved in years. Spares for machines that were retired, parts bought in bulk because the price was right, alternatives purchased when the usual part was unavailable. In a factory with 10 to 15 years of operation, this slow-moving stock can amount to several lakhs in locked-up capital, and nobody is tracking it because the store was never inventoried properly.
The technician needs a 6205 bearing. They check the shelf. It is not in its usual place. They call procurement to order one. The bearing is found two weeks later in a different shelf location, still in its packaging. This happens because the store is managed by institutional memory rather than a stock system, and the knowledge of what is where lives with one person who is not always available.
A seal that costs Rs 200 holds up a machine producing Rs 15,000 of output per hour. The part was not stocked because it was cheap and seemed unlikely to fail. It fails every eight to ten months, which means it should have been stocked at three units minimum. The downtime cost of every stock-out is orders of magnitude larger than the cost of holding the part.
Why this is harder to solve than it looks
The classic answer is "implement an inventory system." Most factories have tried this. The spreadsheet gets updated for a few months, then falls behind, then becomes useless because nobody trusts the numbers. The problem is not the tool. It is the process that feeds the tool.
Spare parts stock goes wrong when consumption is not tracked. When a technician uses a bearing from the shelf, that consumption needs to be recorded at the time of use, not compiled weekly from paper requisition slips that half the team forgets to fill in.
The link between work orders and spare parts
The most effective way to solve spare parts tracking is to connect it directly to your maintenance work orders. When a technician closes a work order, they record what parts were used as part of the completion record, not as a separate procurement action.
This does three things:
- Stock levels update automatically at the point of use, not at the end of the week
- Part consumption is linked to the specific machine and fault, so you can see which assets consume the most spares
- Re-order points can be set based on actual consumption patterns rather than guesswork
The factory that knows exactly how many bearings it uses per month, on which machines, can negotiate annual supply agreements at fixed rates. The factory that does not know is buying reactively, always at a premium.
A practical approach to spare parts classification
Not every part on your shelf needs the same level of attention. A simple three-tier classification changes how you manage the store:
Critical spares
Parts where a stock-out would halt production of a key machine. These should have a minimum stock level that triggers a purchase order automatically when the count drops below it. No exceptions.
Routine consumables
Items with predictable consumption rates: belts, seals, filters, lubricants. These can be managed on a fixed replenishment cycle based on historical usage. Set a quarterly review, consumption in the last 90 days drives the order for the next 90 days.
Insurance spares
Expensive items held for low-probability but high-impact failures: main motors, gearboxes, control panels. These need a conscious decision about whether to hold stock at all, based on the replacement lead time from your supplier versus the cost of downtime during that wait.
Getting started without a full inventory overhaul
You do not need to count everything in the store on day one. Start with what matters most:
- Identify the five to ten parts most commonly used in your maintenance work orders over the past six months
- Set a minimum stock level for each, typically two to three units for consumables, one for critical spares
- Require that parts usage is recorded when closing every maintenance work order
- Review the consumption report at the end of each month and adjust stock levels based on what you actually see
Within 90 days you will have reliable consumption data on your critical parts. That data alone is worth more than a fully stocked store managed by guesswork.
Track spare parts consumption through your maintenance work orders
RakuOps links parts usage to maintenance work orders so your stock picture is always current, no separate inventory system required.
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