Spare Parts & Consumables

In ianaiERP, spare parts aren't a separate kind of record — they're just regular Items with a Spare Part flag turned on. That keeps purchasing, vendor catalogs, costing, lot tracking, and stock locations working exactly the way they already do for any other inventory item. The Equipment suite adds two things on top: the flag itself, so parts can be found and filtered, and a link between a spare-part item and the asset (or assets) it services, optionally with a usage rate.

Flagging an item as a spare part

Open or create the item, turn on the Spare Part switch on its Inventory tab, and save. This is independent of the item's category or type — an item can be both a finished good and a spare part if it's also used as a service replacement.

Once flagged, the item:

• Shows a spare-part badge on the Items list, and can be filtered there.
• Is what the picker defaults to showing when logging parts used on a maintenance event (you can turn that filter off to pick a non-spare-part item instead).
• Is the only kind of item selectable when linking a spare part to an asset.
• Counts toward the Equipment Hub's "Spare Parts Low" KPI once its stock falls to or below its safety stock level.
• Is checked periodically for low stock, which raises an alert.

Consumables vs. spare parts

The same flag covers both — a spare part in the strict sense (a belt, a gear, a motor, a print head) and a consumable used up during operation or maintenance (oil, blades, filters, gloves). If your accounting needs to tell them apart, use item categories for that distinction; operationally — low stock, linking to an asset, usage rate — they're treated the same way.

Linking parts to assets

A link says "this item is a spare part for that asset." It's many-to-many: one part can serve several assets (a generic O-ring, say), and one asset can have many parts linked to it.

From the Maintenance Hub's Spare Parts tab, select + Link Spare Part and fill in:

Usage rate only makes sense for parts whose consumption tracks with running time. Leave it blank for parts that just last until they fail (a belt, a motor) — there's no fixed wear rate to set. Set it for something genuinely runtime-correlated: an oil filter replaced every 500 hours has a usage rate of 1/500; a cutting blade replaced every 200 hours has a usage rate of 1/200. Where a usage rate is set, together with the asset's operating hours, the system has what it needs to eventually project when stock will run out — that projection isn't yet shown on screen, but the data is captured for it.

To remove a link, use Unlink from the row's menu — this only removes the link itself and asks for confirmation first; it doesn't affect the item.

Low-stock alerts

Every few hours, the system checks every spare-part item against its safety stock level. An item sitting between zero and its safety stock raises a warning; an item that's gone negative (backordered) raises a more urgent alert. Either way, it updates the "Spare Parts Low" count on the Equipment Hub and adds an entry to the alerts feed.

This check runs periodically rather than instantly, since low-stock conditions don't need to be caught to the minute — a check every few hours reliably catches it before the next shift.

To control when an item is flagged low, set its Safety Stock quantity on the item itself — there's no company-wide override, so each item's own threshold decides when it alerts.

Where parts actually get consumed

Completing a maintenance event with parts listed on it deducts each part's quantity from stock automatically. Outside of maintenance, spare-part items behave like any other item — a manual stock adjustment or a work-order issue reduces their quantity the same way it would for any inventory item. There's no separate "maintenance inventory" ledger; it's the same stock accounting as everything else.

Example: setting up a press line

1. Flag these items as spare parts: print head assembly, drive belt (in a few sizes), hydraulic oil, cleaning solvent, and filters A/B/C.
2. Set a safety stock level on each, based on how long it takes to reorder against how fast it's normally used.
3. Link each to the asset(s) it services — for example, the print head to Heidelberg Press 1 with no usage rate (it's wear-driven, not time-driven), and Filter A to Heidelberg Press 1 with a usage rate matching its 500-hour replacement interval.
4. Confirm the low-stock alert works by adjusting one item below its safety stock and waiting for the next periodic check, or triggering a manual stock check if your admin tools allow it.

Common problems

An item doesn't show up when linking a spare part. It isn't flagged as a spare part yet — open the item and turn the flag on.

The low-stock count looks wrong. The item's safety stock level probably isn't set — it defaults to zero, which means it will never be flagged as low.

Low-stock alerts never fire. Either no item has actually fallen below its safety stock, or not enough time has passed since the last periodic check.

Parts used on a maintenance job didn't reduce stock. The maintenance event was probably never marked Complete — stock only moves once it is.

One part is linked to many assets and it's getting noisy. Prefer one shared link with a tighter safety-stock threshold over separate links per asset — the link is for traceability, not for tracking separate inventories per asset.

Related

• Maintenance Events — where parts used are recorded and deducted
• Asset Management — the Spare Parts tab on an asset's detail page
• Equipment Hub — the Spare Parts Low KPI and alerts feed