Digital and collaborative spare parts management | MANN+HUMMEL and SPARETECH

Table of contents

• Initial situation: Decentralized and uncontrolled spare parts management
• The challenges
• The successful approach: Leveraging digital solutions
• Results: Digital and collaborative spare parts management with SPARETECH
  • MANN+HUMMEL's results to date with SPARETECH are very promising
  • Example 1: Production downtime of several days avoided
  • Example 2: Transparency across plants and suppliers
• The next steps: The path to collaborative spare parts management

Our collaboration with MANN+HUMMEL began in Germany in 2022 and has expanded throughout Europe, including the Czech Republic, Bosnia, and Spain. The project spanned seven plants in seven cities. At the time, the company dealt with decentralized and difficult-to-control spare parts management, leading to poor material master data quality and a lack of standards and rules—especially across plant borders.

This situation led to considerable challenges, including duplicates, high stock levels, rising procurement costs and high costs for the procurement of successor or replacement products in the event of discontinuation.

Right at the beginning of our collaboration, MANN+HUMMEL was able to quickly achieve several milestones in terms of data quality. Looking ahead, the project aims to maintain these results through continuous data lifecycle management measures and to promote cross-plant collaboration for more efficient and standardized spare parts management.

Initial situation: Decentralized and uncontrolled spare parts management

One major challenge maintenance professionals face today in spare parts management is the lack of transparency, accuracy, and reliability in material master data. Typically, the ERP system serves as the central hub for everything related to spare parts. In this case, machine spare parts are created, stored, moved, processed, and procured in SAP.

💡 New materials are created when a spare part is needed because new operating equipment has been procured or a machine requires repair or maintenance during operation.

This process is often complicated by insufficient (or, in many cases, a lack of) rules and standards for the designation and numbering of spare parts. Manually creating new materials is susceptible to errors, such as creating duplicates.

In addition, MANN+HUMMEL operates decentralized spare parts management, meaning each plant handles the machine parts independently.

The challenges

The initial situation described above makes it difficult for the MANN+HUMMEL maintenance team to respond to sudden and unexpected needs for a specific spare part. The lack of transparent, complete, and reliable information makes it difficult to identify the required part, to check whether it is in stock, or to know where it is stored. All of this led to the following challenges at MANN+HUMMEL, among others:

• Problems with replacement due to discontinuations: Approximately 5% of part numbers across all plants have been discontinued. However, these parts are often only identified when the supplier informs them of the discontinuation after a purchase attempt is made.

• Accumulation of duplicates: Over 5% of duplicates across all plants.

• Missing spare parts

• Effort and costs

These challenges are the perfect starting point for the strategic introduction of digital solutions that optimize operational processes and sustainably increase efficiency in spare parts management.

The successful approach: Leveraging digital solutions

MANN+HUMMEL has explored various digital solutions to enhance spare parts management and has already implemented some of them. One significant integration is the SPARETECH app, which offers the following key benefits:

Effortless master data analysis: Comparison of master data in SAP with SPARETECH's global database through our intelligent matching algorithms.

Reliable data enrichment: Enrichment of Data Insights with original manufacturer data to fill in missing product information and clean up incorrect data in your material master based on 100% reliable and correct supplier data.

Timely identification of discontinued parts: Timely access to manufacturer announcements of product discontinuations and, where applicable, information on successor products, reducing machine downtime due to lack of spare parts.

Transparency of procurement sources: Access to detailed information on procurement sources, enabling comparison of procurement options for identical parts and increasing savings on spare parts procurement costs.

Efficient identification and elimination of duplicates: Efficient and reliable identification of duplicates and their elimination in all plants to reduce inventory costs.

Results: Digital and collaborative spare parts management with SPARETECH  

MANN+HUMMEL's smooth collaboration with SPARETECH has led to several achievements. The following process is a simplified overview of how MANN+HUMMEL and our customers can use the SPARETECH app:  

1. Export the material master directly from the ERP system (e.g. SAP) to an Excel file. Include relevant fields such as material number, material description, purchasing info record, etc.

   SPARETECH can be seamlessly integrated into SAP AIN, S4 Hana and many other ERP systems.

2. Upload the Excel file to the SPARETECH app.
3. Our intelligent matching algorithms compare all data fields with our global database, identify duplicates and discontinuations, and enrich the data (e.g., inaccurate, faulty, or missing information) with 100% correct manufacturer data.

MANN+HUMMEL's results to date with SPARETECH are very promising:

✅ Identification of over 400 duplicates.

✅ Identification of over 1,000 discontinued parts.

✅ Listing of the successor product for approx. 50% of the discontinued parts.

In addition, the MANN+HUMMEL team was able to identify further relevant use cases, e.g., regarding data transparency within and across plants and supplier transparency.

Example 1: Production downtime of several days avoided

A Frequency Inverter was urgently needed as a spare part due to a breakdown causing critical machine downtime as it was not in stock at the affected plant. However, by searching on the SPARETECH app, the part was identified in another plant, preventing prolonged and costly machine downtime.

Example 2: Transparency across plants and suppliers  

Another practical example that will certainly be familiar to all maintenance teams: a safety switch was needed, and the original supplier announced a delivery time of 12 weeks, which would have led to a significant delay in the delivery date for a machine. According to the search results in the SPARETECH app, the part was unavailable in MANN+HUMMEL's material master.

However, the spare part was available in the SPARETECH database and could show alternative supplier and procurement information. The part was immediately available from an online retailer so that it could be procured in time.

Step 1: The part was listed in the SPARETECH database.

Step 2 Alternative suppliers are listed in the procurement information.

Step 3: The part was immediately available from an online retailer.

The next steps: The path to collaborative spare parts management

On the way forward, several key steps are planned to enhance collaborative spare parts management at MANN+HUMMEL:

• Unification of material numbers in SAP: This will streamline the identification and management of spare parts across the company, including identifying and eliminating duplicates.
• Prevention of new duplicates during material creation: Implement measures to avoid spare part duplicates during the creation process, ensuring continuous high data quality.
• ‍Inclusion of additional MANN+HUMMEL-specific spare parts suppliers through SPARETECH supplier management: Expanding our supplier network will ensure diverse options for sourcing spare parts, leading to higher matching rates and data enrichment opportunities.
• ‍Improved spare parts obsolescence management: Fostering a proactive approach to identifying and managing the risk of discontinued parts will minimize unplanned machine downtime, reducing procurement costs and effort.