Webinar summary: Maintenance, Repairs, Operations (MRO) – The invisible opportunities

This summary contains explanations and advice provided during the November 2024 webinar by Raul Trujillo Morales, MRO expert for ERA Group.

Raul trained as an aeronautical engineer at the École Polytechnique and also holds a Specialised Master's degree in Aerospace Engineering from ISAE, a Master's degree in Quality Management and an Executive MBA.

He has over 25 years' experience as a Project, Team, Operations and Transformation Manager in government organizations and companies in the industry in Chile, France, Germany and Spain.

What does the acronym MRO stand for?

The category ""Maintenance, Repairs, Operations"" covers a large number of areas within organizations, several of which are related to Facility Management. Specifically, it includes:

Maintenance contracts

• Equipment and machinery maintenance and repair
• Heating, ventilation and air conditioning
• Automatic doors
• Forklift trucks
• Lifts
• Electrical/water installations

Equipment

• Machinery
• Tools
• Test equipment / Laboratory
• Warehouses
• Platforms/workshops

Operational consumables

• Lubricants and chemicals
• Industrial gases
• PPE / workwear
• Spare parts, consumables, hardware and materials
• Manufacture of parts for maintenance/repair

The MRO market in Europe is estimated at €125 billion in 2024 and is still feeling the effects of the COVID pandemic. The slowdown in industrial growth has reduced the number of suppliers, while demand continues to rise. As a result, prices are increasing by 8% to 15% per year.

(Data from Grand Review Research and Mordor Intelligence)

Questions to ask yourself for effective MRO management

Do you know your suppliers?

There are often three times as many as are identified.

💡 Best practice: Centralise your MRO management.

What IT resources do you have for maintenance and stock monitoring?

Few organizations have centralised computer-assisted maintenance management that takes into account the total cost of ownership (obsolescence of parts and machines, asset management, depreciation, losses and accounting revaluation, repairability indicators, etc.).

💡 Best practice: Centralise your activity and inventory tracking

What maintenance do you use?

The main causes of production stoppages are linked to a lack of predictive maintenance and a lack of control over supply cycles and inventory.

💡 Best practice: Perform more preventive AND predictive maintenance

What is the overall view of these budgets?

Budgets and expenses are often handled by different departments without centralisation, and repair costs are not reported in budgets dedicated to MRO.

💡 Best practice: Centralise your expenditure with a dedicated department

What outsourcing strategy should you adopt?

Labour accounts for 50% of industrial maintenance expenditure.

💡 Best practice: Train your staff for greater efficiency

How can supply contracts be optimised?

The supply is fragmented, as are internal orders, leading to duplication and wasted time.

💡 Best practice: Consolidate your orders with a single supplier.

Threats, opportunities and solutions

The most common threats are:

• Long-standing suppliers without formalised commercial agreements
• Too many suppliers and too much stock
• Reduced budgets, poor quality parts.

And the opportunities to be exploited:

• Direct sourcing from manufacturing countries (balancing according to your CSR objectives)
• Competitive bidding/renegotiation with suppliers
• Inventory reduction, centralised MRO management.

Many solutions have proven effective in improving MRO management:

• Balancing stock levelsto avoid overstocking (immobilisation) and understocking (production stoppages, emergency purchases)
• Use inventory management software and standardise MRO items
• Simplify procurement
• Negotiate better prices and improve service contracts with suppliers
• Manage maintenance activities using integrated systems
• Optimise and balance with effective asset management.

In conclusion

Placing MRO activities at the heart of the business and centralising them is the best way to ensure operational continuity.

Optimising indirect costs, improving prediction and prevention, ensuring product quality and compliance with CSR policy, and ensuring team safety are key aspects to keep in mind to ensure optimised management of your MRO activities. "

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