Track: Graduate Student Paper Competition

Abstract

Coal-fired power plants (CFPPs) are capital intensive that continuous operation is a must to recover investments while consistently supplying power and electricity to franchise areas mandated by the government. Though maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) supplies and services play a vital role in ensuring the company's assets perform properly, not much importance is placed in the management of MRO inventory.  With multiple MRO line items required for operational continuity, an adaptive ordering, purchasing and inventory control platform will be of utmost importance beyond knowing how many MRO SKUs exist, supplier lead times to fulfill MRO replenishment orders, and depletion rate of MRO-related inventory in order to alleviate the varied problems, including the pandemic disruption, on the presently strained MRO supply chain of CFPPs. This study employed a lens of change in this regard, with focus on addressing recurring MRO-related operation stoppages, outdated Min-Max policy and centralized procurement processes among other recurring MRO inventory management issues of a Philippine-based CFPP. This was approached with the adoption of Portfolio Thinking as a procurement strategy and Lean MRO Purchasing as a buying platform model that can be emulated by engineering and utility firms with massive mechanical and electrical systems.