What Is a Computerized Maintenance Management System?
If you are looking to drive your production up and bring emergencies down, a computerized maintenance management system makes perfect sense to fast-track your maintenance practices and procedures. It automates everything from tracking inventory and managing work orders to analyzing data and producing reports. Facility professionals can save tremendous time and effort which a CMMS that is designed to optimize the use of equipment, raw materials, capital, and manpower through effective interfacing of supporting systems right from acquisition to disposal. A CMMS is fully-equipped to ensure the smooth running of standard operating procedures.
If you are contemplating to leverage a computerized maintenance management system to fast-track your procedures, follow these six steps to make the most of your investment:
1. Get Your Team Trained For The Pilot Project
Once you have transferred your existing data on the system and entered all your assets on the CMMS, test it right from the start to the very finish. This is the right time to detect inefficiencies in the system and fix them. Ensure that your system is scalable and fully equipped to accommodate the future needs of your growing business. Schedule a training session so that every employee is acquainted with at least the basic operations of a CMMS.
2. Trace Work Orders
Start by creating work orders and clearly define each task. This will drive accountability and make it easy to manage multiple work orders on time. A CMMS makes it quick and simple to fill out work orders in seconds and have the requests handled on time. A CMMS includes features that facilitate real-time tracking of work order status, availability of staff, daily calendar, tasks assigned, follow-up indicators and asset information. With this 360-degree maintenance overview, it becomes easy to deliver quality solutions consistently.
3. Streamline Asset Management
Assets form the core of every maintenance activity and every CMMS comes with an asset management module which enables the facility manager to design a hierarchy that provides an end-to-end view of your organization’s assets. All it takes is a single click and your asset creation is accomplished. You can then use it to search and manage assets and add them to your work orders as and when needed with a quick drag and drop. A CMMS empowers you to monitor and manage unlimited manufacturing specifications and track metrics thereby increasing uptime by 10 percent and reducing repair time by 30 percent.
4. Schedule Preventive Maintenance
With a CMMS, all the information is stored on a single, easy-to-access module which makes it easy to manage your preventive maintenance schedule. With both temporary and seasonal scheduling capabilities, a CMMS offers a wide range of frequency and dispatching options to make your work fast and easy. A CMMS is simple, easy-to-follow yet powerful enough to streamline your preventive maintenance activities with just a few clicks.
5. Track Your Inventory
A CMMS automates your inventory management process with advanced features that issue and return parts, track costs, reorder necessary items, monitor stock rooms and also prepare accurate inventory reports. A CMMS seamlessly integrates with barcode scanners to automate your manual entries for improved productivity.
6. Generate Reports
A CMMS provides real-time insights into your data and generates more than a hundred configurable reports to help you keep track of daily targets. The reporting module is designed to offer a large selection of reports that can be easily modified as and when needed. The CMMS automates scheduling of reports while making the edits faster and easier. It gives instant access to critical business data for informed decision making and thereby gives you an in-depth view of your analytics
Moving Beyond Maintenance
A computerized maintenance management system goes way beyond standard maintenance functions for improved efficiency. It can add immense value to your business operations by making the complex; speedy and simple. A CMMS allows enterprises to keep up with the maintenance workflow by keeping the staff accountable for accomplishing all the production tasks right the very first time. It facilitates better scheduling which reduces the need for overtime and saves on labor costs. It improves compliance by keeping a constant track of maintenance standards.
More and more companies are employing computer maintenance management systems to minimize equipment downtime, reduce breakdowns and make optimum utilization of staff and contractors while reducing maintenance costs over time. Whether you run a manufacturing plant, a healthcare facility, or a high-end hotel, CMMS software is the key to running a time-efficient and cost-effective maintenance program. With a CMMS, facility managers can proactively manage maintenance requests and accomplish more work with the same team. With a CMMS, your upcoming work, service warranties, schematics, and client requirements – everything is visible on a single platform so that facility managers can focus on critical repairs and replacements rather than spending hours searching for information in a complicated database.
Employing a CMMS is the easiest way to boost productivity, reduce paperwork and prioritize your work.
Lindsey Walker works for NEXGEN Asset Management as their Marketing Manager.
