Spare parts data
A part nobody can describe is a part nobody can sell.
A customer calls with a serial number and asks which part fits, and the answer takes a specialist and an afternoon.
The situation
The machine went out twelve years ago and the parts business on it is only now at its best. The list behind that machine was written to build it, not to sell from it: internal codes, abbreviations, a description field that made sense to whoever typed it.
So a customer calls with a serial number and asks which part fits, and the answer takes a specialist and an afternoon. The webshop cannot list what has no name and no dimensions. Service contracts get priced from judgement, because nobody can say what a machine consumes. And the same part sits in three depots under three codes, bought from three suppliers.
What inRecipe does
That afternoon is spent reconstructing what the part is. inRecipe writes it down once, from specifications it could prove.
Read from the maker’s document or computed from the standard, so the part can be quoted, packed and shipped.
Written only from proven specifications.
The same part under three codes reads as one part.
A maker’s own statement, recorded beside the item with its source. Nothing more.
Which fields this fills
- Identity
- ManufacturerManufacturer part numberDistributor numberStandard designation
- Name and text
- Standardised nameShort sales descriptionPrimary function
- Classification
- The attribute list the item’s class definesnext
- Physical
- Net weightLengthWidthHeightDiameterMaterialPack sizeUnit of measure
- Lifecycle
- Discontinued statusManufacturer-stated successor
Every one of them carries its source, and every one of them can come back as “searched, not found”.
What it does not do
It does not tell you which alternative part could replace a discontinued one. It records what the maker has stated and stops there. It does not watch the market for end-of-life announcements, size a last-time buy, or price anything. And it does not know which parts a given machine takes. That lives in your own structures, not in any public document. Those are the questions this work makes answerable; they are not what it answers today.
Start with the parts your customers ask about most.
- 1Send 100 to 200 of the spare parts your customers ask about most, as they are today.
- 2Within days you see names, dimensions and weights that let each part be quoted and found, and which parts still cannot be.
- 3One hour to walk it through together.
Your ERP, PDM or PIM stays where it is. A file export is enough to start.
Successors and lifecycle →