Product and service solutions provider, RS, has issued a new white paper where it outlines concerning findings about the data centre sector.
As this sector expands to meet growing demand for artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing and digital infrastructure, the maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) strategies are falling well behind, exposing many UK data centre operators to greater operational risks.
“It’s an industry growing at pace. The priority and focus is on building capacity, getting planning permission, getting the facility built and online. The ongoing management is something that gets pushed to the back of people’s minds. Rapid expansion will leave gaps around resource and capability, with engineers living hand-to-mouth, and procurement professionals who haven’t yet got up to speed with what a procurement strategy needs to look like,” said Richard Graham, industry sector manager at RS UK & Ireland.
The RS research found that there is significant variation in how organisations approach MRO planning:
- Nearly half of operators either have no formal MRO strategy or are unsure whether one exists
- 77% say they feel at least slightly exposed when a critical spare is not held on site
- When assessing MRO suppliers, speed of delivery was rated as very important by 82% of respondents, product availability considered very important by 71 per cent and supplier responsiveness scored 80%. Price ranked lowest of the five criteria, with just over half (51%) considering it very important
- 62% believe their operations are exposed by limitations in regional supplier coverage.
The white paper also advises operators should avoid pursuing traditional linear supply chains, and focus on building supply ‘webs’, as new data centre capacity expands beyond London into regional locations. This means connected networks of suppliers, regional stock locations and shared data. This will help multi-site operators understand where inventory is located and how quickly it can reach each site, to improve availability and support resilience across multiple sites. Regional coverage should be a primary consideration in MRO supplier evaluation.
“We talk increasingly about supply webs rather than supply chains. By webs, I mean a network where you have regional stocking hubs, people pulling inventory on high-value, low-frequency items. Supplier consolidation improves availability and responsiveness. And if you are aggregating data around failure across multiple sites, you are improving your forecasting,” said Phil Broughton, special projects manager of the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply (CIPS).
