Computerized Maintenance Management Systems: A Tutorial Part One: Challenges and Features

Saying that a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is just another scheduling tool is tantamount to saying that the Titanic was just another boat. While maintenance scheduling is arguably its most important aspect, CMMS has many additional features that can help a company manage its maintenance function.

CMMS is using software to effectively and efficiently plan and execute tasks meant to maintain a company's operations to ensure maximum uptime of equipment critical to the production of finished goods. To successfully plan a maintenance procedure, the user needs accurate information on the equipment to be maintained, its components, and ongoing production or workload requirements. The maintenance skills and time available must be matched against the workload, equipment items, and availability. Parts and supplies must be procured in advance, in a well-planned fashion, to complete maintenance tasks on schedule. While maintenance may be complex, managing it should not be.

Part One of this two-part note helps you build a business case for CMMS in your organization by examining the maintenance challenges and problems confronting companies and the key features of a CMMS.

Part Two will address the benefits of CMMS and, of course, interfaces issues.

The maintenance challenges facing companies today is optimizing a facility's performance to maximize productivity, improve utilization, reduce waste, and lower operating costs. A major impediment to a facility's throughput and meeting demand is equipment downtime, planned or otherwise. A CMMS provides equipment and tool state modeling, planning and scheduling, performance analysis, preventive maintenance, and paperless operation to maximize needed equipment reliability.

And it's not getting any easier. In push industries, like process manufacturing, you need to react nimbly to changes in the marketplace and the needs for your customers. Equipment outage means lost opportunity, lost revenue, and lost customers. Automation has increased inter-equipment dependencies and demands on the maintenance personnel. Increased automation on the shop floor tends to drive spare part inventory further out of control, resulting in inconsistent or delayed repairs.

The high value of capital equipment and high cost of downtime demand a complete and current knowledge of a piece of equipment's performance and history. The break-fix mode needs to be stopped in favor of failure prevention. The overall control and consistency of repairs needs to be greatly enhanced. Finally, to obtain the maximum value from maintenance personnel, scheduling effectiveness and equipment utilization must be improved. If these challenges face your company, CMMS may provide the means for you to get behind the problem instead of waiting for it to steamroll over you.