For Enviva Holdings NYSE ticker EVA, LP, a sustainability-focused firm and the world’s largest producer of industrial wood pellets, achieving maximum efficiency is a business priority. That corporate imperative extends to everything it does, including its maintenance, repair and operations activities.

Yet, when rising demand necessitated a production capacity increase for Enviva’s nine manufacturing plants along the U.S. East Coast, the firm purchased and installed additional production assets. Enviva still needed to create an efficient parts list for each asset (bill of materials) and ensure the appropriate level of spare parts inventory was established.

Critical Effort; Unwieldy Reality
That activity triggered a requirement to identify all the existing equipment in each of those plants, along with their respective MRO inventory of spare parts. Yet, when Enviva’s internal engineering and maintenance staff attempted to perform the MRO spare parts inventory, they found
it very manually intensive. As they struggled to manage the effort effectively, it became evident that current spare parts management practices were a serious impediment to shorter downtime, Inventory optimization, and overall success.

A Solution Emerges
Seeking an industry leader in master data standardization to take over the project, Enviva leadership spoke with a well-known maintenance reliability company who recommended Net Results Group (NRG) and its MRO3i cloud-based application, which consisted of NRG’s MRO3i workflow management solution for end-to-end asset management and governance. After a series of discussions with NRG leadership, a practical solution was developed that would enable Enviva to reap all the benefits of MRO data governance. The NRG team would leverage its expertise — and the MRO3i solution — to help Enviva perform a series of targeted activities, including:

• Create an Item Master by assigning parts to an appropriate taxonomy and standardizing nouns, modifiers, manufacturer names, manufacturer part numbers and attribute values for each item.
• Create a storeroom inventory in addition to the Item Master inventory. The storeroom-level inventory would identify bin location, min/max quantities, primary and local vendors, and other local storeroom information.
• Check for duplicate items, ensuring no time was wasted creating an item that already existed in the Item Master. It would also confirm to the team that the Item Master was void of duplicates.

After these activities were complete, MRO3i would automatically assign the correct spare parts to each asset (bill of materials) and then establish an asset hierarchy that would allow Enviva to perform comparative cost analytics on the equipment.

From a bottom-line perspective, the client has achieved rich spare parts visibility that it never enjoyed before.

Stellar Outcomes from Powerful Technology
From a bottom-line perspective, the client has achieved rich spare parts visibility that it never enjoyed before. This not only will reduce inventory costs moving forward but it also enabled Enviva to avoid purchasing spare parts inventory they already had in plant resulting in inventory optimization.

Once Enviva’s MRO data cleansing and organization was complete, Enviva was equipped to achieve far-ranging benefits that went well beyond initial problem resolution.

Outcomes that Enviva now enjoys with MRO3i include:

• An ongoing data governance strategy to ensure data quality is maintained and that it doesn’t become corrupted.
• Greater inventory insight, which drives stronger purchasing power with vendors.
• Ongoing MRO materials monitoring for reliability and quality.
• Management and control of MRO spare parts inventory expenditures so inventory values do not increase at a rate higher than consumption of spare parts.
• Accurate work order creation for equipment along with accurate parts lists to maintain a high standard of production uptime.

Perhaps most impressively, the excess spare parts inventory identified by Net Results Group is enabling the client to reduce or eliminate inventory expenses for an entire year.

About Enviva
Enviva is a leading global energy company specializing in sustainable wood bioenergy, operating plants and ports in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, and maintaining corporate offices in four countries. It is the world’s largest producer of sustainable wood pellets, which provide a low-carbon alternative to fossil fuels. In February 2021, Enviva announced its plan to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2030, which will result in the reduction, elimination or offset of all its direct emissions. For more information, visit www.envivabiomass.com.

About Net Results Group
Net Results Group, LLC is a technology-focused consulting firm with a comprehensive offering for significantly improving MRO master data. Headquartered in Louisville, KY, the firm was founded in 1996 with the goal of being THE MRO master data governance expert. The firm’s unique combination of asset expertise, reliability services and tools – including its cloud-based MRO3i™ technology suite – enables it to help asset-intensive organizations make intelligent use of their data. Professional services, including onsite and virtual walkdowns and assessments, also inform storeroom optimization and MRO inventory control to sharpen purchasing strategies, reduce operational costs, increase uptime and improve service levels. For more information, visit www.netresultsgroup.com.