British manufacturers have responded to a reported shortage of critical spare parts by abolishing the time required to make them, creating the first maintenance system in which every component must be available before anyone knows it is broken.
The decision follows Fluke research finding that 83% of UK manufacturers experienced maintenance delays because parts were unavailable or subject to long lead times. The same research found that 22% of spare parts inventory was obsolete, suggesting factories possess plenty of components, provided they are trying to repair something built for a completely different industry in 1986.
Under the new Yesterday Delivery Standard, suppliers receiving an urgent enquiry at 4:47pm must already have designed, manufactured, pressure tested and dispatched the component. Ideally, they will have done so by lunchtime the previous Tuesday, before the customer has decided whether the broken thing is actually a valve.
The system particularly applies to equipment with no visible part number, no surviving manual and a small brass plate bearing the name of a company that stopped trading during the great fax machine boom.
Customers will continue to assist by providing highly detailed specifications such as “blue valve”, “about this big” and “looks like a Turlow one but definitely isn’t”. This information will arrive with a photograph taken from eight metres away while the component remains covered in insulation, darkness and managerial confidence.
Suppliers will then have seven minutes to identify the exact obsolete model, locate the original manufacturer’s grandson and establish whether a modern equivalent fits dimensions nobody has measured. If it does not fit, the customer will explain that the old one fitted perfectly.
For genuinely bespoke items, expectations have been relaxed slightly. Specialist alloy, custom seals, certification and testing are all accepted as reasons for delay, provided the delay lasts no longer than two hours and occurs somewhere outside the customer’s inbox.
The standard also introduces progress updates every eleven minutes. A supplier who says it is waiting to hear back from the manufacturer will receive an email asking whether there are any alternatives. Fourteen seconds later, a phone call will ask whether there have been any updates since the email.
Industry leaders believe downtime can now be eliminated altogether. Manufacturers simply need to predict failures before they happen, stock parts for machinery that has not failed yet and identify the exact shade of blue customers will require next month.
Customers have welcomed the announcement but asked whether it could be implemented yesterday, preferably before breakfast and without a delivery charge. The engineering industry is now investigating whether time itself can be returned as obsolete stock.
Real story: pressroom.fluke.com.
