Major Component Changeouts: Best Practices for a High-Impact Maintenance Workflow

Major component changeouts are among the most complex and high-impact activities in maintenance operations. Replacing a motor, compressor, pump, or other critical part directly affects asset reliability, safety, and operating costs. When these changeouts are handled reactively or inconsistently, organizations often experience repeat failures, extended downtime, and escalating maintenance spend.

The financial impact is significant. Reactive maintenance practices are estimated to cost 3-5x more than preventive maintenance once downtime and lifetime asset damage are considered. For high-value components, an unstructured changeout process can quickly become a major driver of unplanned cost and operational risk.

This is where maintenance, repair, and operations, commonly referred to as MRO, becomes essential.

What is MRO?

MRO encompasses the activities, processes, and inventory required to keep assets operating safely and efficiently. It includes preventive maintenance, corrective repairs, spare parts management, and component refurbishment. When MRO strategies are tightly aligned with major component changeouts, organizations gain greater control over reliability, inventory costs, and asset lifecycle performance.

Defining What Qualifies as a Major Component

Not every part replacement carries the same level of risk or operational impact. While many repairs are routine, major components tend to be higher in value, mechanically complex, rebuildable, or critical to overall asset performance. When these components fail, the consequences are often more severe, ranging from extended downtime to safety concerns or costly emergency replacements. As a result, they typically warrant a higher level of oversight, documentation, and approval.

Clear definitions are essential to applying this level of structure consistently. Without them, teams either overcorrect by adding process to every repair or under manage high impact work by treating all parts the same. Defining what qualifies as a major component allows maintenance teams to apply more rigorous workflows where they matter most, while avoiding unnecessary process overhead for routine repairs. This clarity also improves coordination across technicians, planners, and sites, ensuring everyone is operating from the same playbook.

The First Step

To strike the right balance, organizations should first establish which items truly require a high impact workflow. A Major Component typically meets one or more of the following criteria:

• High Value: Replacement requires a significant capital investment.
• Rebuildable: The component can be refurbished or rotated back into service rather than scrapped.
• Mission Critical: Failure results in immediate operational disruption or safety risk.
• Traceable: The component requires specific documentation, calibration records, warranty tracking, or compliance reporting.

By clearly defining major components upfront, teams can focus time and attention where the risk is highest, apply consistent controls across locations, and reduce friction in day-to-day maintenance execution.

Preserving the Link Between Component and Parent Asset

Major components do not operate in isolation. Their performance is influenced by the parent asset they are installed on, operating conditions, and installation quality.

Maintaining visibility into where a component is installed, how long it has been in service, and which assets it has supported over time enables teams to identify meaningful patterns. This context is critical for understanding whether failures are driven by the component itself or by the environment in which it operates.

Without this connection, valuable insight is lost and repeat issues become harder to diagnose.

To learn more about the importance of this, read the playbook “Lessons Learned in 2025: Insights from the Year’s Most Successful Facilities Team,” where we highlight how one Nuvolo customer used parent-child structured data to preserve this component-to-asset history and turn it into actionable insights.

Using Changeout History to Strengthen MRO Decisions

The decision to repair or replace is often made under the pressure of an outage. Without historical data, teams may default to buy new, even when refurbishment could extend component life at a lower cost.

Organizations that adopt data-driven MRO practices see measurable results. Studies show that predictive maintenance programs can eliminate more than 50% of unplanned downtime and reduce defects by over 70%, demonstrating the value of using historical performance and condition data to guide maintenance decisions.

Capturing changeout history enables teams to intervene earlier, plan refurbishment cycles more effectively, and stop repeat failures before they start.

Aligning Changeouts with Inventory Strategy

Inventory and changeouts are two sides of the same coin. Poor alignment often leads to excess stock, emergency purchasing, or delayed repairs.

Industry benchmarks indicate that 20%-30% of MRO inventory is excess or obsolete. By aligning changeout frequency with inventory planning, organizations can reduce carrying costs while ensuring that when a critical component is needed, it’s actually on the shelf.

Enabling Smarter Component Changeouts with Serialized Parts

As organizations mature their approach to major component changeouts, the need for deeper visibility into high-value components becomes increasingly clear. Standard inventory tracking often falls short when components are rebuilt, reused, or moved across multiple assets over time.

Serialized Parts, introduced as part of Nuvolo’s Wales Release, is designed to address this gap. It enables item-level traceability for critical components, allowing teams to understand where a component has been installed, how it has performed, and how often it has been serviced or replaced.

This level of insight directly supports the MRO best practices discussed throughout this article. By preserving the connection between components, parent assets, work orders, and inventory, teams can identify repeat failures sooner, make more informed repair versus replace decisions, and plan refurbishment cycles with confidence.

Applied selectively to high-value and rebuildable components, Serialized Parts helps organizations reduce reactive maintenance, improve stockroom accuracy, and turn major component changeouts into a more predictable, data-driven workflow.