A continuous learning curve

Recently a notable figure appeared in a status report on thyssenkrupp Elevator’s global logistics. The number of centrally catalogued spare parts for the global elevator and escalator business had passed the 200,000 mark – a surprising figure given it was estimated at around 150,000 just a year and a half ago.

It’s a remarkable number in two respects: Firstly, it shows the daily challenges facing our service technicians around the world in this jungle of elevator and escalator parts. Secondly, this greater transparency is also an important step towards revolutionizing our maintenance business.

Our goal: “On Time and Complete”

The growing data basis is attributable to the global initiative “Spare Parts Business Excellence”, or SPBE for short. This initiative links 18 sub-projects to provide a seamless, digitized logistics chain from production to warehousing to the predictive delivery of spare parts to service technicians. One central component is a standardized catalogue system that serves to identify and order the right spare parts. It can be integrated into the digitized inventory systems of warehouses, the “Spare Parts Business Centers” (SBCs) and the service tool VIEW. Service orders are sent to the technician’s mobile end device, who can switch seamlessly to the catalogue at the job site and add the required parts to the shopping cart. Direct sales offers can also be submitted in this way.

The goal is to be “On Time and Complete” thanks to a seamless order, delivery and installation process. Digitized inventory management and logistics processes ensure spare parts are available around the clock. Through the higher transparency, sources of errors are also minimized; incorrectly entered serial numbers, different warehouse systems and time-consuming searches for the correct part are all a thing of the past.

Launch on the Indian market

Until beginning of this year, the SPBE systems have been implemented in Spain and China among other countries and a further milestone was reached this year with India. Since March service technicians in the country have also been able to offer and order spare parts directly. The parts are stored and supplied from the new SBC in Chakan, Pune. The central administration and storage facility is located directly at the elevator plant. Covering a total area of almost 950 square meters, the warehouse offers space for over 5,000 different parts and components for maintenance services. This enables warehouse staff to supply the specific parts needed by the on-site teams. They in turn can collect the spare parts from pickup points or vehicles provided for this purpose by the company. A total of 5 of the 24 Indian branches are already being supplied in this way via Direct Delivery Mechanism and the number is rising. Overall thyssenkrupp Elevator has over 900 service technicians conducting maintenance for customers in India.

Processes become transparent – and so do sources of errors

The successes achieved in India are the result of international teamwork. They are based on the support of colleagues from the Operating Unit (OU) China who already migrated their processes to the new systems two years ago. This included the Docware catalogue, a new Central Spare Parts Warehouse with a Material Requirement Planning tool to manage the service inventory and the order and offer processes connected to the VIEW service tool.

“This is a so-called copy and paste approach in which we first copied the VIEW-Daproh SPBE system configuration from China to India and then, expanded the configuration to include local requirements.” says Frank Kwong, Spare Parts Director for Asia-Pacific. “This enabled us to roll out the project very quickly.”

This efficiency boost will soon also be felt in the branches. Since the central warehouse takes inventory planning and replenishment off their shoulders, they are able to concentrate on their operational tasks and their customers. But SPBE is also opening up new opportunities for improvement. Why did approval of the delivery take so long? Is the supply chain fulfilling the Field demands? Were the right parts delivered? Are the technicians coping with the catalogue system?

Abhinav Mishra has experienced this first hand. He is a “PMO Elevate” manager in India and tracks progress in optimizing end-to-end processes. “We now have a transparent insight into so many processes and can see where things went wrong in the past,” explains Mishra. Based on this, improvements can be realized quickly in cooperation with colleagues on the ground.” He adds: “It’s a continuous learning curve.”

A learning curve that will undoubtedly bring other unknown spare parts to light.