Archibus SaaS / Maintenance / Parts Inventory
Maintenance / Corrective Maintenance / Inventory Manager

Storing Parts in Multiple Locations

Organizations that exist in multiple geographic locations, or that have a large single campus can reduce costs by decentralizing the parts inventory. Maintenance departments can keep lower inventories of parts at any one location by enabling part transfers between sites.

Archibus shows you the location and quantity of all your critical spare parts, and facilitates the transfer of those parts to the location where they are needed. This enables you to keep lower inventory levels, and avoid problems with imbalances and outages.

• You are able to flexibly define multiple storage locations for parts. For example, you can define locations to be warehouses, storage closets or rooms, portable carts, or craftspersons' vehicles.
• You can optionally associate the storage location with a location in your space hierarchy down to the room level. If a location is associated with a room, you can also define an aisle, shelf, cabinet, and bin for the part. If you associate the location with a building that you have geocoded, you are able to see the storage location on a map, along with the work request location.

Workflow

Following is the process overview for storing and managing parts in multiple locations:

1. Define storage locations. The inventory manager or business process owner creates records for the storage locations your organization uses. For example, a storage location can be a warehouse, a storage room, or even a craftsperson's vehicle. Optionally, you can assign a storage location to a building down to the room level.
2. Optionally, enter storage vehicles as equipment or as vehicles. If you are storing parts in vehicles, consider storing vehicles in the Vehicles table or the Equipment table as follows:
   • If you are considering using the Archibus Fleet Management application, either now or in the future, store your vehicles in the Vehicles table. This will simplify migrating your data to the Fleet Management application.
   • If you do not plan to use the Archibus Fleet Management application, consider storing these vehicles in the Equipment table as well as the Parts in Storage Locations table. Doing so enables you to manage these vehicles as equipment for preventive maintenance and other asset management tasks.

     See Using Fleet Management or the Equipment Table when Storing Parts in Vehicles.

3. Define vendors. Enter vendor and vendor accounts if you have not already developed this data in another Archibus application. See Entering Vendors.
4. Develop your parts inventory. Define parts so that you can track and manage them in the application. See Define Parts for Multiple Storage Locations. You can also add parts as you work from the Adjust Inventory task.
5. Associate parts with their vendors . See Maintaining a List of Part Vendors.

   Note: You must define your vendors and associate them with parts if you want to use the application to generate purchase orders for parts.

6. Associate locations with parts. You can associate parts with storage locations from several views. For example, from the Manage Parts Inventory task, you can add parts to a storage location. See Adding a part to a storage location.
7. Manually adjust the inventory. You use this task when you need to add parts that have just been received, to transfer parts from one storage location to another, to manually disburse parts that were used but not recorded with any work request, to return parts to inventory, or to reconcile the electronic and physical inventory when a survey shows that there is a discrepancy. When you are first starting, you establish your parts inventory by running the Add as newly received action. See Adjusting the Inventory.
8. Create supply requisitions to transfer parts. When parts are needed at a different location, you can create a supply requisition to transfer parts between storage locations. See Creating Supply Requisitions for Parts.
9. Create purchase orders for parts when inventory is low. See Generating Purchase Orders for Parts,
10. Monitor parts inventory: The inventory manager monitors the level of each type of part in the inventory to determine if there are sufficient parts for work requests that need those parts today or in the near future. See Managing the Parts Inventory.
11. Reserve parts for work requests. When parts are estimated, the system presents the possible locations from which those parts can come, and defaults to a location that coincides with the location of the work request. If parts are reserved, but they are not available at the required location, then a part transfer can be initiated. See Estimating Trades. Parts, and Other Costs, and Finding Parts for Estimates Using the Map.
12. Close out a work request. The actual parts used are entered when closing a work request. If this quantity differs from the Quantity Reserved, then it is assumed that any additional parts were already drawn from inventory, and any unused parts were already returned to the Storage Location from which they were taken. See Closing work requests.
13. Generate preventive maintenance work orders Any scheduled preventive maintenance procedures that include parts will result in work requests with those parts assigned. The system also associates those assignments with a storage location code. See Generating preventive maintenance work orders when storing parts in multiple locations.

Managing parts for vehicles

When storing parts in vehicles, consider whether you need the more extensive features of the Archibus Fleet Management application. This application enables you to track and report on vehicles separately when it comes to preventive maintenance, drivers, vehicle schedules, and so on. For example, you can create schedules for vehicle assignments and shop times, and assign vehicles to department or employees. See Using Fleet Management or the Equipment Table When Storing Parts in Vehicles.