Asset Criticality and Spares Strategy Kit

The fastest way to waste money on spare parts is to treat every asset as equally important.

This kit creates a clear, simple criticality model so stocking decisions are:

• defensible
• consistent
• tied to downtime risk

What you will produce

1. Asset criticality tiers
2. Spares stocking rules by tier
3. Approved emergency sourcing rules
4. A review cadence to keep the system current

Step-by-step implementation

Step 1: Create a criticality tier system

Use three tiers:

• Tier A: failure stops operations or creates safety risk
• Tier B: failure creates material cost or service impact
• Tier C: failure is inconvenient but manageable

Step 2: Define spares rules by tier

You are trying to prevent two extremes:

• hoarding parts for non-critical assets
• stocking too little for critical assets

Step 3: Define emergency sourcing rules

Emergency sourcing should be allowed, but visible.

Step 4: Review quarterly

Criticality changes when:

• volumes change
• equipment ages
• vendor lead times change

Templates

A) Asset criticality scoring (copy and paste)

Copyable template (TEXT)
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Asset Criticality Scoring

Asset:
Location:
Owner:

Impact if it fails:
- Safety risk: [low / medium / high]
- Production or service interruption: [low / medium / high]
- Cost per hour of downtime: $____
- Typical downtime hours per incident: ____
- Availability of workaround: [yes / no]

Tier assignment:
- Tier A / Tier B / Tier C

Notes:

B) Spares stocking rules (copy and paste)

Copyable template (TEXT)
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Spares Stocking Rules

Tier A assets:
- Stock critical spares on site
- Minimum quantity: ____
- Max quantity: ____
- Target replenishment lead time: ____

Tier B assets:
- Stock limited spares for common failures
- Minimum quantity: ____
- Max quantity: ____
- Target replenishment lead time: ____

Tier C assets:
- Do not stock unless lead time is extreme
- Use standard buying channel

C) Emergency sourcing log (copy and paste)

Copyable template (TEXT)
Copy
Emergency Sourcing Log

| Date | Asset | Part | Reason | Cost | Vendor | Approved by | Prevention action |
| ---- | ----- | ---- | ------ | ---: | ------ | ---------- | ---------------- |

Common failure modes

• criticality is too complex, so no one uses it
• tiers exist but do not change stocking behavior
• emergencies are not logged, so problems repeat