We have talked before that one of the easiest ways to drop weight is to drop installed spares.

Yet, many continue to cling to the perception they need installed spares. 

The operative word is perception.

A Pareto analysis will tell you if the perception is valid.  Look at your downtime and its causes over the last year or the last two years.  Could any of it have been saved by an installed spare?

Then turn the exercise around--look at your installed spares.  Examine how many times they were used in the last two years.  What downtime did they save?  More importantly, what was their costs?

Digging out their costs can be harder.  For an installed spare pump with poor labeling could cause extra downtime when troubleshooting.

Get rid of this stuff.

I know of a mill that has a combustion engine installed (that runs on natural gas) which is supposed to kick in and keep certain pieces of machinery rotating in case the main power supply for this rotating machinery shuts down. Except--most of the time this engine's mechanical coupling has been out of service. One time when it was in place, something went bump in the night and coupling parts flew everywhere. It was only by the Grace of God someone wasn't standing in the line of fire and killed.

Resolve in 2017 to thoroughly examine installed spares and be ruthless in their dismantling.