In the world of equipment maintenance, the ability to meet and improve upon scheduled turnaround times provides a competitive edge and helps improve ROI of labour costs. Traditional material handling workflows rely on static methods to record and monitor parts location and movement.

These manual procedures prove to be unreliable and difficult to enforce, because the priority is to finish the task and move on to another, not to fill out the paperwork. As a result, facilities often lose track of materials and parts, causing significant maintenance delays and wasting skilled labour time on lengthy searches.

The Extronics Advance MRO solution eliminates delays by providing web-based, real-time visibility for parts, bins and subassemblies. By leveraging the maintenance facility’s existing Wi-Fi and applying active or passive tags to these items, mechanics and supervisors quickly find the specific components needed for inspection, repair, modification or overhaul, regardless of whether the materials are in the “right” place or not. The same technology extends to track tools, toolkits and other equipment used in the maintenance process, ensuring that replacement costs decrease and work always starts on time.

How Maintenance Repair Overhaul solutions work

The Extronics Advance solution places an active RFID tag on all direct goods and components, such as parts carriers, portable storage racks and WIP subassemblies. The tags send regular, short bursts over the Wi-Fi network containing location, status and condition information. Using the MobileView software from workstations or mobile devices, workers and supervisors search for needed parts and visualize their locations on a facility map. This automated process can cut average search time to less than 1 minute and provides instant update on repair, maintenance & overhaul (RMO) operations.

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