Common-Sense CMMS
Combining Software and Handheld Devices
By Eitan Shibi, Techs4Biz Corporation

A Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is an essential operational and management tool for managing asset preservation, ensuring that production systems operate as required, and minimizing downtime.  An effective CMMS should be able to support these functions by automating administrative tasks, as well as by gathering relevant information in order to perform this processes.  A CMMS also needs to be able to develop and manage a strategic plan for proper maintenance, replacement, and upgrade of major assets.

·         If you do not have a CMMS, should you be considering one?

·         If your organization has a CMMS, are you optimizing its benefits and its return on your investment?

Let’s try to answer these questions:

Why use a CMMS?

The primary purpose of a CMMS is to manage, capture, and track inspection, maintenance and repair activities of an organization.  In real terms, most CMMS solutions perform the basic function of providing work orders to cover repairs and maintenance of buildings, plant and equipment. They provide a scheduling facility for maintenance for planned preventive work on maintainable assets. And they also generally collect costing details for the labor and materials related to the work performed.

However, advanced CMMS solutions can also improve many other aspects of your daily activities, as well as provide you with the tools to understand and analyze your maintenance and repair processes and trends.  They can eliminate your manual data entry, incorporate alerts, triggers, and escalation procedures, and shift your focus from unnecessary administrative tasks to performing maintenance activities.  They can also assist you in planning and predicting future needs, prolonging the life expectancy of your assets, and managing your processes.

Combining CMMS software with proven technologies such as handheld devices and PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant such as a Palm) can substantially increase your realized benefits from your CMMS solution:

·  Incorporate barcodes to increase accuracy and efficiencies;

·  Update information electronically, eliminating unnecessary paperwork and data entry;

·  Capture timestamps and signatures;

·  Provide maintenance personnel, engineers, and inspectors with electronic ‘intelligent’ work orders;

·  Automatically track and manage inventories and timesheets;

·  Equip staff with easy-to-use tools that enable them to focus on their expertise and work activities, rather than on administrative tasks and paperwork.

General Considerations in Justifying the Need for a CMMS Solution

The first consideration in choosing a CMMS is whether to keep maintenance information in a database on a computer? Some people will say that it depends on the size of the organization and its assets. Others will say that it depends on the number and quality of staff available to resource the CMMS. Also there are those who would argue that it can all be done on paper.

I am sure that in the past, many of you who were required to prepare reports for your manager, spent hours sorting through maintenance requests and maintenance filing systems to try to find the answer(s)… or worse, just gave an educated guess.

Only a well-designed and easy-to-use CMMS solution can improve daily activities as well as index and sort through years of information related to the maintenance, cleaning and strategic planning of buildings, plant and equipment.  In reality, regardless of the size of an organization, you need to maintain a database of the work performed.  Automation includes improvement of daily activities, automatic tracking of inventories, better work assignments, and shift of your focus towards exceptions, not routine matters.

Breakdown Maintenance

It could be that the entire maintenance plan is one of “breakdown maintenance”, where people call someone as and when needed.  Breakdown maintenance defers repairs and allows damage to accumulate, compounding an organization’s problems. On the other hand, regularly scheduled equipment inspection and maintenance not only prevents sudden and unexpected equipment failure, but also reduces the overall cost of the building and equipment.

In my opinion the management of these programs, in particular reporting their current status and future needs, requires a CMMS.  Managing the operation of on-site maintenance staff and contractors is a daunting and difficult task, however, if there is a corresponding record within the CMMS then this tracking and management is much easier.

Even if you are duplicating data to what is in your contractor’s CMMS (the contractor’s CMMS may not be on your premises), it is extremely important that you have your own copy of data.  Your contractor may cease to exist and for the sake of future reference and reporting it is essential you have your own CMMS populated with your own data.

What information should be captured?

Further consideration should be given to what information do we WANT to keep, and more importantly, what HAS to be kept?

In addition to manufacturer’s specifications and management requirements, there are many statutory requirements and regulations that impact on this question such as fire, health and safety, and environmental legislation.

Statutory requirements (programs) could be entered into a CMMS as a scheduled maintenance plan with labor, materials and costs for projecting estimated future costs.  By keeping a corresponding record in the CMMS and using the job number as a cross reference to the paper record, the organization is able to quickly report on the status of the statutory work in preparation to annual signoffs and/or audits.

Those of you who have had work place safety audits are aware that the first question asked is ‘Where are the maintenance records?’ A maintenance plan that includes estimated costs can be compared with the actual costs to ensure the effectiveness in the cost of asset preservation.

Using PDAs to dramatically improve activities and efficiencies

Additional considerations include the use of handheld devices that in recent years have become very popular as they keep millions of people organized.  By extending the use of standard PDAs to business applications (or using handheld devices with standard PDA operating system such as Palm OS), users can quickly improve their daily activities.

Including handheld devices in your CMMS solution will migrate your organization from using ‘paper-based’ CMMS software to a more comprehensive automation solution.

Handheld devices can verify your data input, suggest possible outcomes to a task, suggest a course of action, or print a report.  They can also automate your specific processes, include information about your assets and equipment, automate your inventory cycle count process, and provide easy-to-navigate functionalities, minimizing ‘key-strokes’ and maximizing productivity.

Selection Process

So where do you start looking for the right CMMS package for your organization?

• Look within your own organization and determine what is happening with the maintenance and inspection functions. Check if there is an existing maintenance program in place, check its functions and who manages the information gathering process.

• Determine what maintenance is required to be performed on the building, plant and equipment that make up your facility.

• Prepare some sort of brief as to the facility’s minimum and optimum requirements for a CMMS, the resources to manage the database and time frame for implementation.

• Research between 3 and 5 providers. Have them present their product to assess the package in terms of ease of use, functionality and ability to meet your requirements.

• Evaluate each proposal for specific CMMS functionalities:

· Does it address your specific requirements?

· Does it minimize unnecessary or duplicate data entry?

· Can you automate administrative tasks, reminders and notifications of upcoming events?

· Do you have built-in dynamic escalation procedures?

· Can you incorporate inspections, and other activities in your CMMS?

· Can you manage and track inventories?

· Is there an ability to collect requests for work to be done directly into the CMMS via electronic means (such as PDAs or web portals)?

· Is there the ability to transfer work assignments to technicians via electronic means?

· What is its ROI?

This is a simplistic approach to the selection process, however, it will give most managers a good starting guide to the selection of a CMMS.

Benefits of Using Enhanced CMMS Solutions

· Guarantee that all required tasks and activities are completed on time.

· Incorporate various mechanisms to ensure execution of tasks, including automatic listing of activities, reminders, alerts, escalation procedures, and easy access to information.

· Improve reporting and analysis capabilities.

· Comply with Health and Safety Regulations.

· Improve Business Planning and make informed decisions.

· Improve operational efficiencies.

· Increase productivity and profitability.

· Perform activities effectively; simplify repeatable tasks; provide your staff with easy to use tools that focus on performing tasks.

· Let your staff spend more time performing service activities and less time on paperwork and data entry.

· Improve strategic and business planning; Analyze records, needs and patterns.

· Identify trends and highlight potential problem areas.

· Improve controls and accountability; Lead to better quality of work.

· Ensure that service is performed according to warranties, guidelines and regulations.

· Receive customized reports delivered to your email.

There are many additional benefits of using a system using handheld devices, in comparison with manual or paper-based processes: minimizing errors, increasing accountability, and having the ability to quickly turn data into useful information.  Last, solutions must be cost effective and providers must be able to demonstrate their business case and ROI (Return-On-Investment).

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mr. Eitan Shibi has over 20 years of experience in the Information Technology industry, with a focus on automating maintenance, inspection, repair, and service activities for a variety of organizations.  Prior to starting Tech4Biz Corporation, Mr. Shibi has held a variety of senior I.T. positions including Chief Information Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and Senior Project Manager for both large and small, public and private companies.

Techs4Biz Corporation develops and sells technology solutions for improving work-related activities and processes, combining software with handheld devices.  Specifically designed for manufacturing, Techs4Biz offers an easy-to-use system that increases productivity, decreases costs, and can quickly store, analyze and disseminate information.

www.techs4biz.com  -  1 (800) 361-8725