Maintenance management is the core of your business. Managed badly it costs you time, money, and sometimes the business itself.
This is what changes when maintenance moves off spreadsheets and paper — module by module, from work orders and preventive maintenance through to GIS mapping and the cybersecurity question most buyers forget to ask.
The maintenance management experience today is very different from that of spreadsheets, notebooks, pencils and paper. With the centralization and mobility of data, businesses are looking at a web-based Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) to manage their maintenance operations.
No matter what size business or organization you have, the number of locations, or where in the world you are located, companies have similar goals:
- Keep detailed accurate records of all assets.
- Schedule maintenance tasks and activities, maintain historical records, and keep track of work completed.
- Store all data such as work orders, history, manuals and more in one centralized location, with access at any time from any location, via computer, smartphone, or mobile device.
- Generate the reports they need.
- Implement a program all users are comfortable with.
- Protection against cybersecurity threats.
Why You Need Maintenance Management Software
Without maintenance management, there can be significant delays in products and services, disruption to business operations, and an increase in expenses. Maintenance management helps companies organize and manage time and costs, to ensure the efficiency of processes and procedures while maintaining resources and controlling costs.
What Is The Best Maintenance Management Solution?
Moving from spreadsheets, paper and pencils is a big step. Adopting computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software is the first step towards making maintenance operations at your facility cheaper, more effective, and more efficient. More on effective maintenance management.
If you would like a better understanding of CMMS software, read What Is A CMMS.
How A CMMS Manages Each Part Of The Job
To help you understand the features in a CMMS, below are the maintenance tasks it covers and how the software helps manage each one, reduce costs and improve productivity.
Work Orders
A work order is a formal request for maintenance, repair, or tasks that need to be done, and it outlines the processes and procedures for completing those tasks. Learn more about work orders.
Maintenance management software helps
- Organize, manage, prioritize and reassign work orders.
- Manage and track work order completion time, status, job expenses, and more.
- Schedule work for off-peak hours or a more convenient time.
- Control labor time and overtime.
- Monitor and control expenses for ordering supplies and materials.
- Access related equipment history, manuals, photos, and other important information from computers, smartphones, or mobile devices.
- Monitor workflow and increase efficiency.
- Maintain and generate work order history reports.
Preventive Maintenance
Preventive maintenance gives users the ability to control, plan, schedule, and identify the materials, parts, and labor to do repairs and maintenance within a specific timeframe. The advantages are keeping existing equipment in good working condition, preventing equipment downtime, increasing the life expectancy of assets, decreasing the number of major repairs, and controlling expenses. More on preventive maintenance.
Maintenance management software helps
- Calendar scheduling of preventive maintenance activities.
- Track maintenance history.
- Control equipment downtime.
- Reduce costly unplanned equipment failures.
- More control over repair expenses.
Spare Parts Inventory Management
Inventory management is the process of having the right spare parts inventory in stock, in the right place, at the right time, and at the right cost. The objective is to minimize costs by helping maintenance organizations know when to purchase more inventory based on routine usage rates.
Maintenance management software helps
- Minimize human error and reduce the time required for manual inventory management.
- Just-in-time inventory shared between multiple sites.
- No need to shut down your stock room to perform cycle counts.
- Create, track and receive purchase orders.
- Automatic monitoring and notification of inventory levels.
Vendor Management
Integrate vendors, suppliers, resources, and third-party vendor information into your maintenance system.
Maintenance management software helps
- Track suppliers that contribute to your maintenance operations, such as parts vendors or equipment manufacturers.
- Track vendors, purchase orders, returns, and more.
- Track contact information, invoices, work history, and schedules.
- Track and maintain a record of a vendor’s time, parts used, and other important data.
Asset Management
Asset lifecycle management supports asset performance for the entire lifecycle of an asset, from acquisition to removal. Understanding the value of Enterprise Asset Management.
Maintenance management software helps
- Maintain historic records of assets.
- Know when it is time to retire an asset — is it costing you more than it is worth?
- Analyze and interpret historical data to determine problems and successes.
- Improve asset reliability and reduce costs.
Discover expert asset management guidance tailored for maintenance professionals.
Geographic Information System
Get a comprehensive view and the data associated with each asset on a floor plan, schematic, site map, or any other image. Additional information on GIS asset management.
Maintenance management software helps
- The GIS module is a system of mapping your infrastructure assets.
- Users can visually locate specific assets to add or edit work order or asset details.
- Workers in the field can confirm they are at the correct location, or look up details about infrastructure before starting a job.
Document Management
Document management is a system or process used to capture and store paper-based documents, digital images, and more.
Maintenance management software helps
- Store and access manuals, documents, images, and drawings in one centralized location.
Manage Labor
Capture critical information about a wide range of variables beyond labor hours: start and completion of jobs, repair parts consumed, type of work performed, skill sets employed, service and part vendors involved, and more.
Maintenance management software helps
- Track work order time, vacations, sick time, breaks, payroll and billing information.
- Control scheduling and management of labor costs.
- Control operating costs, prevent labor overtime, and ensure equipment uptime and availability.
Mobile Access
A CMMS gives you the flexibility to access all of your information on assets, work orders, preventive maintenance, and more from anywhere at any time.
Maintenance management software helps
- Access maintenance data, manuals, documents, historical information, drawings, and pictures from a mobile device, anywhere and anytime.
- Technicians can update work orders from anywhere.
Reports And Dashboards
Assemble the data you have been collecting within your CMMS and turn it into reports that are meaningful to you and others in your organization. Create dashboards that give you a real-time view of all of your systems. Understanding MTTR, MTBF and MTTF failure metrics.
Maintenance management software helps
- Monitor workflows and maintenance activities to increase efficiency and improve productivity.
- Create reports that meet the needs of your organization or business.
- Incorporate KPI (key performance indicator) data into your dashboard views.
Communications
A CMMS lets you manage work orders, assets, and inventory while communicating with the assigned manager or vendor directly inside the work order.
Maintenance management software helps
- Improved communication between maintenance teams and other departments.
- Quickly change work priorities, work orders and due dates, and communicate them to the whole maintenance team.
- Improves access to real-time, updated information.
What Improves Straight Away
- Real-time updates: the real-time data generated by a CMMS gives users and management more accurate information.
- Control costs: cost savings come through improved management, more preventive maintenance, and less corrective unplanned maintenance.
- Accuracy: direct import of clear, concise data in real time. No redundancy.
- Compliance: generate clear and accurate detailed reports for industry audits and regulatory compliance inspections.
- Safety: a CMMS improves safety tracking and compliance and supports a safe work environment for employees.
Cybersecurity: Choosing The Right Vendor
Cybersecurity has become a daily word in every industry. With ransomware attacks, maintenance and reliability teams throughout all facilities, government organizations, and manufacturers need to assess their level of cyber risk and improve their cyber preventive maintenance actions.
A vendor with a poor cybersecurity score can open the doors to security breaches and bring your business to a halt.
Vendors say they have a secure network, but do they? There are companies that specialize in analyzing vendor networks to confirm that data is secure. These firms provide security scorecards rating vendors across various categories. When evaluating a vendor, ask what their rating is and ask them to share their cybersecurity scorecard with you.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is maintenance management software?
Software that holds maintenance work in one place — work orders, preventive maintenance schedules, asset records, spare parts, labour and reporting. In practice most people mean a CMMS, a computerized maintenance management system. The point of it is that the record follows the asset rather than the person who did the job.
Why is a spreadsheet not enough?
A spreadsheet can store maintenance data but it cannot act on it. It will not raise a work order when a PM comes due, it will not tell you a part is below its reorder point, and it will not connect a repair to the asset that needed it. It also usually depends on one person understanding how it is built.
What is GIS asset management?
Mapping your infrastructure assets onto a floor plan, schematic or site map so they can be found visually. A technician in the field can confirm they are at the right asset before starting, and work orders can be raised or edited straight from the map. It matters most for buried, distributed or outdoor infrastructure where an address alone is not enough to find the thing.
Why does a CMMS vendor’s cybersecurity matter?
Because the vendor holds your operational data and, in a hosted system, sits inside your workflow. A breach at the vendor is a breach that reaches you. Ask for their security scorecard rating rather than accepting an assurance that the network is secure — independent firms rate vendors on this, and a vendor confident in their rating will share it.
How does a CMMS reduce maintenance costs?
Mostly by shifting work from unplanned to planned. Emergency repairs cost more in labour, in expedited parts and in lost production than the same job scheduled in advance. On top of that, inventory carrying costs fall once stock levels are managed against real usage, and overtime falls once scheduling is visible.
What should you track first?
Work orders. Until every job is captured, nothing else has a foundation — asset history is incomplete, parts usage is invisible, and labour cannot be costed. Preventive maintenance schedules come next, then inventory. Reporting is last, because it needs enough history to be worth reading.
Summary
Maintenance management has come a long way from spreadsheets, pencil and paper. Businesses looking for a reliable solution should consider eWorkOrders, a G2 High Performer in the CMMS space. Having a maintenance management system in place provides a set of features that helps:
- Reduce equipment downtime
- Improve resource and labor utilization
- Increase asset reliability and lifespan
- Manage and control inventory
Ask Us For The Scorecard
The article says to ask a vendor for their cybersecurity rating. Ask us — and bring your assets and PM schedules while you are at it.
