Every marine workshop knows the scene. The boat hangs in the slings, the technician has the raw-water intake open, and the impeller that "was on the back shelf" is not there.
Then the usual ritual begins: shouting across the workshop, rummaging through bins, phoning the supplier, ordering with express carriage. The hoist, meanwhile, charges by the hour. And the owner watches from the pontoon.
What a lost spare part really costs
An impeller costs forty euros. An impeller that cannot be found costs the hoist standing idle, the technician's hour spent searching instead of fitting, the express carriage that triples the price of the part, and an awkward conversation with the customer who had set their morning aside for launching. Add it all up: the most expensive spare part in the workshop is always the one that cannot be found.
And here is the important part: the lost spare part is almost never lost. Either it is in the wrong location, or another order took it without recording it, or it entered the store without ever being booked in. Three different diseases with the same symptom, and none of them is cured by "tidying the store" on a Saturday morning. That tidiness lasts two weeks; method, on the other hand, stays.
A forty-euro impeller can cost four hundred: the price of an idle hoist while someone searches for it.
Four rules of traceability
Traceability in a marine workshop does not require a robotic warehouse. It requires four rules, followed without exception:
- Named locations. Every reference lives in a specific location — aisle, shelf, bin — recorded in the system. "It's over there somewhere" stops being a valid answer, because the part's record states exactly where it is and how many are left.
- Serial numbers and lots. For critical parts — pumps, starters, electronics, liferafts — the serial number travels with the part from goods-in to the order. If there is a warranty to claim or a manufacturer's alert, you know which boat each unit is fitted to. No digging through delivery notes.
- Reservation per repair order. When a workshop order or a job afloat is confirmed, its spare parts are reserved against it. Monday's emergency cannot walk off with Tuesday's haul-out impeller without leaving a trace: the system flags the shortage before the boat is in the hoist, not afterwards.
- Double verification at goods-in. What comes in is counted twice before it is accepted. Most discrepancies are not born in the store: they are born in a rushed receipt, with the delivery note signed without counting the packages. Ten minutes at the goods-in bay save hours on the hardstanding.
The store as part of the flow, not a back room
Traceability is not a hobby for tidy people: it is the condition for the rest of the business to work. Quotes are calculated on real costs and real availability, not hunches. Orders start knowing the parts are set aside. Invoices reflect what was actually fitted, with the serial number where the part calls for one. And the annual stocktake stops being a year-end drama and becomes small, frequent adjustments nobody dreads.
All of this is standard functionality of the system, connected to workshop and call-out orders: routes, locations, serial traceability and reservations. There is nothing to build; there is something to configure well for the reality of a harbour workshop, which is not that of a logistics warehouse.
If your spare parts are "usually there" but sometimes not, that "sometimes" costs you every season. We can measure it together and put method behind it.