You may have heard about what is a CMMS thrown around without fully understanding what it means. Software designed to set down asset data, maintenance activities, and work order management.
Previously maintenance managers in commercial organizations spent a load of time correlating the asset and maintenance data in the paper record to create maintenance schedules for the team. This often takes more time to create the work order, which works in an inefficient way and decreases the reputation of the company. Implementing the CMMS system provides numerous benefits for customers, workers, and for industries. Let’s take a look to get a complete understanding of CMMS.
What is a CMMS?
CMMS stands for Computerized Maintenance Management System, a software that records maintenance information and paves the way for smooth maintenance operation. CMMS is also expressed as maintenance management software. It acts as a communication tool to process maintenance operations from the centralized platform.
CMMS optimize the use of equipment, equipment availability, running time, facilities, and operations. It supports the maintenance team to organize maintenance-related activities easily. Let’s break down the word computerized maintenance management system to get a clear answer on how do you define CMMS?
Computerized
Computerized software gives the ability to record and manage data in a single database. In the 1980s, companies used paper records to maintain operation data, inventory data, and update the data upon work completion. With the growth of technology and computers, CMMS was born. The CMMS provides many features to store and maintain data that help the organization with preventive maintenance and create work order flow with an effective schedule plan.
Maintenance
Maintenance is the process of managing and maintaining the organization’s assets and resources with an effective plan, so that the equipment works with no downtime, and increases the production of the organization without money wastage. With the proper work order of scheduling the equipment under due maintenance, allocating resources, managing inventory, costs, repairs, calculating downtimes and the list goes on. It helps to make better tasks and plans to ease maintenance and communication.
Management
Management is the process of administering business practices to create more profit with effective management. Maintenance management plays a significant role in CMMS software. The cmms gives detailed information about reports, schedules, deadlines, and operation levels with real-time data in the dashboard. And it also allows organizations to access and retrieve data for the accurate planning of work.
System
The set of integrated devices designed to create, receive, store, manage and process every single bit of information with high accuracy and in a meaningful and user-friendly way is called a system. The CMMS system allows users to complete maintenance operations with reduced cost and time. The CMMS solution produces reports and documents to analyze maintenance activities with preventive maintenance tasks. By understanding each term, you can get a better knowledge of what is a CMMS.
Working of CMMS
A cmms allows maintenance managers to plan and process maintenance operations while tracking assets and work order reports. This software helps to schedule maintenance operations with real-time data and makes them more efficient with reduced downtime.
This proactive maintenance process can extend the life of the asset, increase productivity and reduce maintenance costs. This helps the maintenance team to work at their best. CMMS system helps to monitor the status of information like employee availability for maintenance, crew assemblage, scheduling shifts, and asset information like location, costs, manufacturer, and model. It also supports inventory management, preventive maintenance, and generating reports.
How does a Powerful CMMS Help Your Organization?
Your organization can benefit from using CMMS, it can easily:
- Increase efficiency and adaptability
- Reduces equipment downtime
- Helps to plan budget effectively
- Schedule work order flow
- Reduces equipment repair costs
- Supports preventive maintenance process
- Real-time data with a mobile-supported app
- Improves the organization’s visibility
- Decrease loads of time to schedule work orders
- Easy tracking of inventory management
Why do you need a CMMS?
Every organization has to make a decision at one point when it comes down to maintenance or repair. CMMS helps to figure out which issues need maintenance and which will need repair, provided with the estimation of time and cost required for the issue. This supports the maintenance team to decide what to do. With real-time data and different lookout conditions, the software helps to keep track of and compare all the specifications.
This is why you need a CMMS system:
- Predict problems before they arrive
- Automate maintenance tasks
- Take out the audit headaches
- Workflow visibility
- Regulatory compliances and
- Allowing to focus on high-priority tasks to maximize efforts.
What to Consider When Investing in a CMMS ?
Selecting and implementing a centralized maintenance CMMS is an integral part of the company. When looking to invest in CMMS, consider identifying and analyzing the existing operation plan of the company, procedures, and safety to see how CMMS supports your company.
Identify the metrics in which the maintenance team will analyze the efficiency of the CMMS program. After the complete analysis, make sure to get the best deal by,
- Booking a demo to demonstrate the real-time situations.
- Downloading the mobile application to test with the technicians, how simple the forms and work order flow are.
- Comparing the costs of CMMS and get the flexible price plan within your budget and scale.
CMMS Market Outlook
With the increasing demand for CMMS in small and medium-sized industries makes the CMMS market contribute more.
The total estimated revenue of computerized maintenance management systems in 2021 is US$ 1,526.3 Mn. With a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.8% for 2022-2031, the CMMS software market is expected to reach US$ 3,816.6 Mn by the projected year 2032.
The CMMS vendors are continuously developing advanced CMMS to catch up with the new industry of technology evolution with Artificial Intelligence(AI) and the Internet of Things(IoT).
The CMMS program provides solutions to various industries like manufacturing, education, logistics, transportation, retail, hospitality, energy and utilities, the local and federal government, and others.
Top Signs- It’s Time to Buy CMMS Software
Your needs changed
Almost every new user of CMMS starts here. Whether they have used paper records, a database, or in an excel sheet, it is not just working, they need more.
Your equipment fails regularly
The outdated method your company is using is reactive maintenance, it needs to be replaced with proactive maintenance. It is difficult to keep track of data in the spreadsheet with this method. The CMMS eases the maintenance process significantly.
Incomplete maintenance on time
At the time of missed spare parts due to the inappropriate maintenance of data, affects the success of the production. Ordering the spare parts at an emergency time requires dealing with multiple approvals for the budget.
Ready to go on mobile
Mobile technology allows every person in the team to access the data in real-time, and records information on the spot of maintenance operation wherever they are.
Transparency and visibility
The maintenance manager struggles to get accurate information about the operator’s working hours, location, and recently completed tasks. This squeezes the manager’s time; to know what is going on in the project. CMMS monitors the progress of each task with related information in a single dashboard.
The Factors Inhibiting the Adoption of a CMMS
Lack of involvement
The downfall of the cmms occurs when the people using or interacting with the CMMS software were not involved in the process of getting the right solution. When the lead users are not involved in the process, they don’t meet the requirements, then they will get biased thoughts about the efficiency of the software.
Complexity
Plan for early training of the lead users, this eliminates the complexity of the tool. The CMMS system with the centralized workflow will work well, but only when the users are trained and followed up with the system properly.
Implementation problem
Some CMMS projects fail due to the wrong implementation of setting up the software. Once it is done properly, it is easy to use, but the proper configuration is the main part of setting up the software. Seek help from a vendor professional team to implement the CMMS software without any trouble.
Hindrance to change
The CMMS changes the operation of the maintenance team, and some feel uncomfortable with the shift. The workers who have spent a certain way cannot change suddenly, they will not have a complete understanding about what is a CMMS and they feel challenged to rely on the software. A clear and comprehensive training plan will solve this problem.
When the above problems are solved, the CMMS attracts a return on investment, improves uptime, and makes life better for the users.
Final Thought
A computerized maintenance management system(CMMS) has many benefits that help to reduce downtime in small and medium-scale industries. This software focuses on proactive maintenance rather than costly repairs. The equipment’s life term can be increased with preventive maintenance works. The software not only benefits the organization but also helps with the safety of the workers. All these processes in the single multipurpose tool maximize the efficiency and overall performance of the organization.
