7 Key insights
every CPO should know
about MRO

Got MRO?
These 7 MRO Insights cover fundamental strategies to help your company navigate the complexities of this category. The MRO market is estimated at $1.7 trillion annually - $200 billion of which is in the industrial segment – make sure you’re optimizing MRO for your company now and for years to come.

Insight 7: Codifying Tribal Knowledge

A key issue facing today’s manufacturers is that the people who have kept their plants running for the past three decades are retiring. With each retirement, the facility loses access to critical information because it is not recorded anywhere outside of those employee’s minds. This is also commonly known as “tribal knowledge”.

Tradesmanship is in limited supply, and the portion of the labor market available to fill these open positions is getting smaller and smaller.

Responding to a Shift in the Workforce

Younger generations are not flocking to careers in manufacturing. With fewer trained candidates available, those with hands-on manufacturing experience are in high demand, and therefore they command a salary premium. Even with inflated compensation, top talent can easily be lured away with even higher salaries and better benefits, leading to yet more turnover and more loss of tribal knowledge.

As a response to these shifts in the workforce, companies need to preserve and supplement their tribal knowledge with strategic supplier partnerships that focus on solving production problems in a way that reflects tradition but also constantly introduces best practices.

How to better address MRO spend?

Tenzing MRO experts are able to deliver results in MRO because they have spent years walking the shop floor. They know what to look for and what questions to ask, and have the knowledge to align commodity expertise, program leadership, and world-class processes.

MRO is a category that must be managed on two levels in parallel: at the corporate level and on the plant floor.

An effective MRO strategy meets the objectives of the Boardroom and the plants, and offers a good opportunity for suppliers as well. For example, Tenzing worked with a $7B+ company that had over 60 operations on 3 continents.​ We reduced their vendor complexity from thousands to less than a dozen, reduced PPV in excess of 3%, and lined up Continuous Improvement worth at least 10% of MRO purchases annually for the next 3 years.

Tenzing can integrate great practices and form solid partnerships… equal in merit to those in place on the direct spend side.

Conclusion

Tenzing Experts + The MRO Framework