Your company has valuable components that cannot be repaired or refurbished by using internal processing. Therefore, you want to send them to a service company for refurbishment by qualified specialists.
You also want to ensure that the disposition and state of the component can be seen at all times. For this reason, you need to understand the process of external refurbishment of spare parts.
Refurbishment
Refurbishment of valuable components:
From a special stock
Sent to a subcontractor
Triggered by a maintenance order
Integrated with MRP and purchasing
Benefits of Refurbishment
The benefits of refurbishment are as follows:
Improved visibility of defective components.
Closer integration between Materials Management and Plant Maintenance.
Separate stock for externally processed components.
Integration of subcontracting with purchasing.
Recording of serial numbers in the purchase order.
External Refurbishment through Subcontracting
Subcontracting is a process in which refurbishment part are sent, with or without serial numbers, to external subcontractors. A service provider receives a part (also called a rotable) from a customer for maintenance or repair. The service provider adds the defective part to its stocks first, and then either repairs it in-house or sends it to another subcontractor for repair, refurbishment, or maintenance. As soon as the work is complete, the subcontractor sends the part back to the service provider, who then returns it to the customer.
The process of external refurbishment originates from the business process Rotables & Subcontracting of the industry solution Aerospace & Defence. There are various available process variants. The external refurbishment process is triggered, from a maintenance perspective, via a refurbishment order.
Subcontracting Using Materials Requirements Planning (MRP) with Indirect Order Reference
The scenario of subcontracting using materials requirement planning (MRP) is based on stocks managed separately (in different storage locations). In this scenario, defective parts are managed in a separate stock in the corresponding state. The storage location for defective parts is flagged as not relevant for MRP. The material master contains the Subcontracting special procurement indicator. If no parts are available in regular stock, MRP can choose between regular procurement and procurement through subcontracting. In the subcontracting case, parts are provided from the defective parts stocks.
In the case of subcontracting, the maintenance order is an indirect trigger for subcontracting. It does not contain a subcontracting activity; however, it plans a regular maintenance task to which the corresponding spare part is assigned.
The reservation triggered by the maintenance order results in a shortfall in the warehouse.
The planning run in MRP results in a planned order. You can choose to turn the planned order into a Purchase Requisition/Purchase Order or an internal refurbishment order. The planned PO contains a subcontracting item with the defective unit.
The subcontracting monitor is used to create and choose a delivery for the PO. The goods issue (GI) is then posted for the delivery. After the GI is posted, the defective component is physically transferred to the service partner. The defective component is managed in a special stock in the system (provision of material to vendor), which means it is still visible during external refurbishment.
The service partner, or its subcontractor, carries out the repair.
The GR of the refurbished component is posted to the spare parts warehouse using the new valuation type.
The refurbished component is now available again. The maintenance order for subcontracting is set to technically completed.