Balancing availability, risk and working capital
Mining inventory management is about ensuring asset reliability while minimising working capital across thousands of consumable, repairable and critical spare items.
The challenge
Mining has specific aspects planners must consider: high-value rotables and spares; slow-moving demand; multi-site operations; OEM dependencies; supply risk and long lead times; siloed planning functions; budget constraints; complicated cataloguing; the risk of obsolescence; the high impact of stockouts; master data issues that snowball when mines change hands; and the high cost and risk of changing ERP systems.
Stockouts, excess inventory, duplicate materials and poor visibility indicate that data quality, classification, demand understanding, policy maintenance, supply risk management and governance are not in place.
What is required
End-to-end business processes that solve problems across teams; metrics that show whether processes are executed and driving results; problem-solving skills; automation of routines; technology that supports decisions and adapts cost-effectively to changing maturity; and a plan to mature the materials management capability, with the commitment to execute it.
StoXeo was developed specifically for mining inventory complexity, including high-value rotables, slow-moving demand and multi-site operations. It provides a framework that supports the most practical and efficient route to operational maturity.