The potentials in the various departments of your company are considerable. The key, however, is not the optimization of individual departments, which at best leads to suboptimal results, but the achievement of the maximum overall benefit across departmental boundaries. For your successful part management project, the first thing you need to do is overcome departmental thinking. Then the dynamic develops by itself.
In most cases, the vicious circle of part proliferation starts in engineering and design, sometime it also starts in the sales department caused by customer-specific requirements that lead to variants and specialized products. During active marketing measures of the product, the departments “purchasing” and “materials handling” deal with purchased parts or assemblies from receipt of the goods until they arrive at the warehouse. At the same time the departments “process planning”, “production control”, and “production” deal with the manufacturing and assembly of drawing parts or assemblies. In addition, of course, there is also the “service” which has to work on the part as spare part long after end of production.
In each of these departments the potentials created by mastering and reducing the proliferation of parts as well as avoiding unnecessary new parts are considerable – whereby the latter can only be achieved in cooperation with the engineering department.
The evaluation of potential benefits requires an in-depth and individual examination of your company and is part of the workshops for developing your customized part management strategy.