Modern MRO supply chains are awash with data yet starved of control, leaving critical operations exposed to unnecessary risk, cost, and complexity. This presentation exposes the top ten systemic problems hiding in plain sight and shows how fixing them can transform inventory from a necessary burden into a powerful lever for reliability and cash flow.

At the heart of the maze are weak material foundations: unstructured descriptions, poorly defined criticality, and missing or incomplete BOMs that drive maverick spend, duplication, and pure waste. Compounding this are gaps in purchasing master data, inconsistent or imaginary lead times, and “set and forget” reorder settings that quietly generate stockouts on the shop floor and surplus on the balance sheet.

The paper also tackles the hidden killers of performance: excessive Free Text spend, neglected SLOB reviews, and low stock accuracy that force planners and maintainers into manual workarounds and squirrel stores. Finally, it highlights the striking absence of meaningful KPIs in environments holding tens of millions of dollars in inventory and provides practical direction on what to measure to cut both risk and cost.

Rather than offering theory, this top ten list distils years of hands-on problem solving into a pragmatic roadmap for reliability, maintenance, and supply chain leaders ready to regain control of their MRO ecosystem.