The buyer's path: find a spare part

The target is a technician standing at a stopped machine, on a phone, in a factory hall, at 19:20 on a Friday, who reaches the right part in under a minute. This article is that path, and what each step needs from your data.

The entry points, in the order buyers use them

Put all of these on one page. Which one a buyer uses depends on what they happen to be holding, and forcing them through a single route is what makes them phone instead.

1. My machines. Registered installed base, one click to their parts list. The fastest path and the one that only works for returning buyers — see The customer's installed base.
2. Serial number. A field, and a photo showing where the type plate is. Accept FS200-2014-0871, FS200 2014 0871 and FS2002014871 alike.
3. Machine or series. A picker, with photos. Photos matter: a technician recognises the machine long before they recognise its type designation.
4. Part number. Your number, an old number, a superseded number, or a competitor's. All four must return something.
5. Search. Everything above, plus the description. If a serial or type number returns zero results, that is a machine you have not modelled, named by the customer — see Zero results.

Down the drawing

From any entry point the buyer arrives at an assembly with an exploded drawing. The interaction that works has four properties:

• Click the drawing, select the row. Click callout 030, the parts list scrolls to position 030 and highlights it.
• Hover the row, highlight the drawing. The reverse. A technician who has the name but not the location uses this constantly.
• Descend into sub-assemblies. Position 020 is the valve block; clicking it opens its own drawing and its own list. Multi-level machines are navigated, not scrolled.
• A breadcrumb back up. FS-200 › Dosierkopf BG-4400 › Ventilblock BG-4420. Buyers get lost four levels down without it.

Two things make the list usable rather than merely correct. Put the wear parts first, or flag them — of 200 positions, perhaps twelve actually fail, and those twelve are why the buyer is here. And show the quantity from the BOM: position 030 is four seals, so the quantity field opens at 4, not 1. That single default removes the most common ordering error in spare parts.

Kit suggestions

The buyer wants the seal. Fitting the seal means opening the housing, which means the housing gasket has to be replaced too, and the technician on site will discover that at 22:00 with the gasket 400 km away.

Three suggestions worth making, each from different data:

Keep them honest. This is not a cross-sell slot. A maintenance technician who is sold something they did not need stops trusting the suggestions, and the "also needed" one is the one that prevents a second breakdown.

Availability for a stopped machine

For a spare part, availability is not a nice-to-have on the page. It is the decision. A buyer with a standing production line reads the availability line and decides whether to order from you or to phone somebody else, and the four answers below are four different decisions — not four shades of one.

The one to get right is the third. A three-week part described as "available" produces a customer who has planned a repair around a delivery that is not coming. Say the number.

Two more that are specific to this scenario:

• Branch stock is worth more than central stock. A part 40 km away that can be collected this afternoon beats a part in the central warehouse arriving tomorrow, and it is a reason to order from you rather than locally. Model your branches as stock locations and show them by name — see Stock and locations.
• A nightly stock copy is not a stock figure. For most articles it is fine; for spare parts it is the promise the whole shop is judged on, and it will be wrong at exactly the moment it matters. See Stock accuracy.

Into the cart and out again

The last stretch is where speed is won or lost.

• Add several positions at once. A technician who has found four positions in one drawing should tick four boxes and add them in one action, with quantities pre-filled from the BOM.
• Quick order by number. For the buyer who already knows all four numbers — see Quick order.
• Their prices, visible. Contract price and stock on the parts list itself, not only after adding to the cart.
• Save the list. The parts for one machine, saved and named, so the next breakdown is a reorder — see Order lists.
• A required-by date and an express option at checkout. An urgent order needs to be flagged as urgent all the way through to dispatch, not just felt as urgent by the customer.

What to check

Run this yourself, on a phone, once a month, on a machine series you did not model:

• Under a minute from landing to cart, using the serial-number path.
• Every entry point returns something. Especially a superseded number and a type designation with the wrong hyphenation.
• The quantity defaults from the BOM, not to 1.
• The availability statement is true. Pick three parts and check the figure against the warehouse.
• A dead end is impossible. Try to reach a page that offers no next step. When you find one — and you will — fix that page.

Next

• Maintain BOMs and drawings — keeping this accurate.
• Sell spare parts online — the whole scenario, phased.