Five tips for better preventative maintenance with CMMS

Turn your strategy from reactive to proactive

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Excerpted from SMGlobal’s Maintenance Software Blog

Anyone who is responsible for maintenance in a commercial facility or manufacturing plant is keenly aware of the headaches caused by equipment breakdowns. You may have thousands of items to keep in top operating condition; knowing that if one breaks down, the entire operation may come to a screeching halt.

You are also aware regular preventative maintenance management is an important factor in preventing these breakdowns. Computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) can be an amazing asset for increasing efficiency in preventative maintenance scheduling and procedures and in reducing time lost due to equipment breakdowns. Five tips for better preventative maintenance with your CMMS software:

Turn your maintenance management into a proactive rather than a reactive system. Remember that the CMMS software is a component of an effective maintenance management process. The process is unique to your facility; the software is refined and applied to fit your process. A team effort is needed to ensure that the CMMS software meets the needs of everyone involved – maintenance and engineering, plant operations, and your information technology technicians.

Your maintenance management team should focus on three main objectives: identify areas for maintenance process improvement; pursue better ways to allocate maintenance costs; and, most importantly, provide your technicians with an effective method for scheduling and tracking preventative maintenance.

Determine the specific and most pressing needs within your facility; evaluate the strengths and weaknesses. How will your staff react to a different, computer based, approach to maintenance? How is your current preventive maintenance plan implemented and how is it tracked? How effective is your current system? How much support do you have throughout the facility for these changes?

Identify the objectives you want to achieve with CMMS software. Starting with the ending result in mind, establish goals and set deadlines to meet these goals. Are these goals realistic? When you have a clearly defined goal, everyone in your facility can focus on achieving the same outcome.

Again working with your maintenance management team, establish standards for your facility. These standards are important in implementing an effective maintenance management plan. Through set standards you can measure performance and improvements in efficiency. Use these standards to establish detailed written preventative maintenance management procedures and schedules.

With CMMS software, you can track and maintain data regarding maintenance schedules, procedures, processes, and resource usage. You can monitor inventory levels and justify manpower. And you can control costs by minimizing downtime and maximizing existing recourses more effectively.