A computerized maintenance management system popularly known as CMMS is a software solution that is used to schedule and plan your equipment maintenance in the same way as you would do your material resource planning with the help of an MRP system for the ordering of raw materials and assemblies in your hardware facility so you are never short of goods or end up wasting more time and money on storage.
A CMMS system is not as expensive as an MRP system, but there is some cost involved in buying it, learning to use it, and maintaining it in the long term. You’ve got to ask the question, Is it worth the effort? We will discuss the same in this article.
One of the easiest ways to make the best use of a CMMS system is by using it to schedule and plan all your equipment maintenance work with the aim of preventing any sort of wastage.
Preventive Maintenance For The Win
When you are not scheduling your maintenance, you will be ending up deferring maintenance until the equipment is almost dead. Think of one piece of equipment that requires oil to be replaced periodically, and if you end up doing it only after someone reports the equipment is smoking from burned oil or the motor is making some noise because of the added mechanical friction, then you will be damaging the machinery before maintenance.
Maintenance should take place before a total failure. If not, the impact of this alternate practice will wear out your equipment faster than you would like to. You will end up replacing equipment sooner than otherwise necessary, literally paying extra for all the deferred maintenance work with higher capital costs later.
Maintenance, Repairs, and Overtime
Some companies will end up wasting a lot of time and resources and trying to do maintenance work based on their calendar instead of doing it when it needs to be done based on the actual runtime. The end result of this attitude will be that your machinery will end up failing sooner or later, as the maintenance schedule is not aligned with its actual operating schedule.
With the help of a CMMS system, you will be able to plan the maintenance of the machinery as part of your staff’s intended workload to reduce, if not eliminate any of the overtime costs. A CMMS tool will also help you to schedule your work around your new equipment assembly and new repairs so that all your maintenance activities aren’t forgotten in the rush of higher priority work.
Conclusion:
I hope this article was useful for you to learn more about some of the most important things to consider before getting yourself a computerized maintenance management system and how you can use it for the growth of your business. There are so many possibilities that are unlocked with the help of this. Make the most out of it. If you have any doubts with regards to this, let us know through the comments and we will be glad to help you out. If you have any suggestions regarding how we can improve the article, let us know through the comments as well for us to improve.
Do you have any other reservations about trying out a CMMS solution for your business? Are you using any other CMMS solution at the moment? If you are already using one, what is your experience with it and how have the results been so far? What do you think about the workflows and processes associated with it? Let us know through the comments and we would love to discuss it with you.
