Spares Quick Tip: Cycle Counting Inventory

On occasion, customers have reached out to investigate ideas and or best practices on how to best address the "Cycle Counting" of the Spare Parts Inventory. Though you may not see a pre-built feature within the Spares Module for "Cycle Counting", we do have customers who have identified creative solutions that accomplish this by utilizing a couple of L2L tools and modules together. 

One excellent method is that MRO Store Room Resources have created a schedule in L2L at a pre-determined frequency they desire, such as a Weekly or Monthly "Cycle Counting Event". You can schedule the occurrence interval to meet your company standard or at a frequency that meets your desired outcome. The system monitors this frequency and launches a "Dispatch Event" assigned to a resource to complete. This gives the team objective evidence that the cycle counting has been performed and allows the team also to identify discrepancies and launch additional "Follow-Ups" or Escalations associated with the Cycle Count Exercise, if necessary. In addition, the team has identified parts by pulling reports or exporting current inventory, then randomizing a pre-determined quantity of parts to cycle count. The parts identified using the Spares Export or Spares Report can be added to the dispatch event to document objective evidence that the cycle counting exercise has been satisfied. If the goal is to "touch" each and every part of your spare inventory, this can be achieved by dividing the current inventory by occurrence interval. This may help in understanding how many parts must be physically counted in order to work through your entire inventory 1 X Annually, etc.

Many customers have also found that creating a "Digital Checklist" comprised of tasks and instructions to complete and satisfy the "Cycle Counting" attached to the  Scheduled Event is crucial. Creating and adding a task list of instructions to your "Cycle Count" event schedule will also provide traceable digital evidence that the exercise has been completed. Your L2L digital checklist can also provide automatic escalations based on user responses. You can poka-yoke this process and digital checklist by "Launching Follow-Up" escalations based on responses captured during the cycle count exercise.