What are the Capabilities of a CMMS?
When CMMS software is used to its potential, maintenance, facilities, reliability, and inventory professionals can track and report on data (work orders, preventive maintenance (PM), spare parts, people, purchasing, etc.) important to their department. With this data, decisions can be made to increase reliability, productivity, profitability, competitiveness, and customer satisfaction.
Why CMMS is Needed?
Companies make significant investments in equipment and that equipment needs to be maintained on a regular basis, just like your car, every 3 months or every 3,000 miles. Most people have a car and know that the oil needs to be changed every 3 months or 3,000 miles. They either change the oil themselves or take it to a service shop. That’s something they can remember to do on a regular basis or they can reference the sticker on their windshield placed there by the service shop. Now let’s turn to a manufacturing plant or a facility where maintenance and facilities departments are required to maintain not only one car (piece of equipment), but 100s if not 1000s. And, all of that equipment is not the same equipment type (car) - there are many different types of equipment to manage. And, even if the equipment is of the same type, each piece of equipment has its own personality and runs differently. And, not only do they have to maintain equipment on a regular basis, they have to:
- Know what parts to use.
- Have those parts in stock and available.
- Know where the parts are located.
- Know where the parts are located.
- Tasks
- Know what tasks to perform.
- People
- Have personnel trained and / or certified on performing those tasks.
- Have personnel available to perform those tasks.
The above list is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to equipment maintenance. What about all of the emergency and requested work that is performed? The list of variables keeps growing and variables upon variables upon variables make it impossible to efficiently maintain equipment without CMMS / EAM software. It's mind boggling that maintenance and facilities departments are not only tasked with maintaining equipment without a proper tracking tool (CMMS / EAM software), but they are required to report on it. Without CMMS / EAM software, time and money is wasted, the inventory beast runs amuck, and downtime and frustration prevails. The bottom line is that maintenance is a game of chess and CMMS / EAM software is required to win and checkmate the opposing forces (costs, downtime, part shortages, customer dissatisfaction, etc.)
