More than ever, facility managers are facing supply chain problems that are negatively affecting business and budgets. The Covid-19 pandemic, labor shortages, heightened demand, and rising prices have created a nightmare supply chain scenario. Supply chain problems have bumped HVAC pricing by more than 80% in the last six months and raised prices on asset components and facility management parts by up to 12 – 15% on average.  

With the end of these supply chain issues nowhere in sight, it can feel impossible to control facility budgets. Costs continue to rise above budgeted prices, and outages seem to loom with order and shipping delays. However, with a few easy supply chain do’s and don’ts, facility managers can take control of these problems and easily mitigate budget strain and outages. 

The Don’ts of Supply Chain Management 

In the case of delays or emergencies due to factors outside of your control, these habits can suddenly expose weak points in your supply chain that can negatively impact your bottom line. Here are a few things that might need re-evaluating to protect the business and your budget from supply chain delays:
 

• DON’T rely on reactive maintenance. This type of maintenance allows equipment to run to failure and is sometimes preferred by companies because it requires less personnel time and money to perform equipment upkeep. Reactive maintenance can also be used to maximize asset output by using assets to their limits. But this strategy is only a good one until system equipment fails. Once equipment has failed, truck rolls can become extremely costly and put the comfort of both employees and customers at risk with prolonged outages, or worse, a loss in revenue due to operations stopping.
   
• DON’T forget to plan for the future. Budgets should include planning for routine repairs, predictive maintenance, and long-term capital expenditures or system replacements. To start creating a maintenance budget, facility managers should review past work orders, truck rolls, and replacement part purchases from previous years and combine the amount spent.  

• DON’T simply roll a truck when there is an outage. Each time a piece of equipment goes down and a truck is rolled for repair; the technician is likely only solving a piece of the problem rather than finding the root cause of the issue. Band-aid fixes lead to recurring asset problems, wasted budget over time, and can even lead to permanent system failure if serious root problems are not addressed. Make sure you do testing to find the root cause of the problem.  

Do these actions to protect your bottom line from supply chain delays 

Protect your business from outages and mitigate stress on your budget by ensuring your facility does the following: 

• DO implement a predictive maintenance schedule. Because predictive maintenance addresses problems before appliances stop working; it is highly cost effective, saving roughly 8%-12% over preventive maintenance, and up to 40% over reactive maintenance. Predictive maintenance gives you the time to order parts, address maintenance needs, and ultimately extend the life of existing appliances, eliminating the need to purchase new machines. 
• DO have a clear, accurate, and honest understanding of in-transit times. This foundational understanding in your supply chain will help you plan well and adjust to external events as they unfold. 
• DO perform regular preventative maintenance tasks.  Being proactive about maintenance, rather than focusing on reactive maintenance when something goes wrong, can save facilities money on maintenance and repair costs

• DO employ an energy management system. Energy and asset monitoring systems can prevent truck rolls and costly repairs, as they identify HVAC issues before they become a major problem, allowing you to easily perform predictive maintenance. An energy and asset monitoring system is your first line of defense against costly HVAC outages. Monitoring systems use AI to collect data about your facility’s HVAC system, understand long-term, trending HVAC system issues, and help prioritize maintenance. This allows you to extend the life of existing equipment and reduce the need for new equipment. 

• DO have an emergency supply of inventory. Your inventory should include a few months of essential supplies to see you through an emergency. Supply chain delays are making it essential to keep spare parts in inventory in case of extended shipping times. Ensuring these delays won’t affect your business is key to keeping it running smoothly. 

Supply chain management is an important part of protecting your business

Supply chain problems may be here to stay but GridPoint makes it easy to protect your bottom line. Monitor HVAC health, reduce energy usage, and perform predictive maintenance with ease by using GridPoint’s energy management system.  

In the last 12 months alone, GridPoint’s HVAC Health tool was able to identify 32,354 malfunctioning units (12,310 Sev 1 and 20,044 Sev 2) and alerted facility managers, before it became a critical issue. 

Want results like these? Our energy experts will conduct a free energy analysis and site evaluation, identifying ways to improve your onsite assets and reduce your overall operating costs.