Nowadays, every business is looking for that edge that will keep them one step ahead of the competition. Whether it’s reducing overheads, retaining customers, enhancing your brand or in this case, managing your equipment and inventory, in today’s fast-paced world you can’t afford to be left behind.
To answer the question from the title, let’s look at some areas in which CMMS excel and in which industries are they most commonly used.
Lower repair costs
One of the key benefits of a computerized maintenance management system is that it allows you to keep your equipment well maintained.
It doesn’t matter if you are experiencing constantly broken air conditioners or interruptions to your production lines. These issues will become a thing of the past with a properly configured CMMS. As a bonus, well-maintained assets experience fewer breakdowns, which translates into lower repair costs.
Using a CMMS, your business can schedule preventive maintenance and also reduce paperwork. Instead of wasting hours every week trying to keep track of each and every piece of work in a filing cabinet or Excel sheet, the smart features of a modern CMMS software will automatically alert your maintenance about the problem and assign the repairing task accordingly.
No more time wasted running around trying to figure out what needs to be done.
Manage work orders
Juggling work orders can be a tough nut to crack for any company, especially when it comes to updating the inventory during and after a service call. Software for maintenance and facilities management gives your business a leg up on the competition by improving your workflow and allowing you to schedule, assign, and close work orders quickly and easily.
A CMMS also gives you the ability to customize work order screens with the desired fields, automatically track all work orders in the system, and capture the history associated with every piece of equipment.
Many of these features don’t exist in legacy or non-computerized systems.
Enhance productivity through mobile devices
People today are used to having information at their fingertips 24/7 courtesy of their smartphones, and employees are no different. Your business can thrive with the help of mobile devices since your employees will save time in the field when needing to update maintenance logs, stock levels, meter readings and more. Ensuring that your data is always kept up to date.
This real-time flow of data helps your managers know exactly what’s broken, what the stock levels are, how much it is costing them and so much more, all in real-time.
Industries benefiting from CMMS
Let’s look at how some of the industries are benefiting from maintenance software.
Oil, Gas, and Mining
The oil industry has several uses of CMMS, including maintaining and updating the inventory of tools, parts, and machinery for oil rigs, platforms, and refineries. Rather than rush-ordering parts that are needed immediately, using a CMMS they can plan their purchases well in advance, saving both money and preventing downtime.
Being a valuable commodity, oil production and refining requires high uptime, meaning maintenance is key for interruption-free operations. The CMMS streamlines the daily maintenance tasks while ensuring accurate recordkeeping. It keeps constant track of metrics that have a profound impact on the equipment’s performance, generating greater revenue as projects expand.
Food and Beverage
Because the food and beverage industry has to comply with stringent regulatory requirements, timely maintenance plays a pivotal role in keeping production lines fully functional around the clock. You can’t afford for a freezer to break down and spoil the fish and frozen meats, so ensuring that it is well-maintained is a priority.
A CMMS is fully loaded to accomplish everything needed to prevent downtime and other problems. It provides accurate reports on work orders, inventory levels, maintenance schedules and allocated funds for operations without any interruption.
With all the machinery and equipment used in modern kitchens as well as food manufacturing plants, a well-maintained infrastructure can mean the difference between failure and success for a business.
Utilities
Utilities provide essential services that require extensive maintenance and upkeep. They need to send crews of workmen to repair downed lines or repair pipes, while crews need to be assigned tools and materials to diagnose and repair faults.
A CMMS stores all the information on a centralized dashboard so managers can stay on top of work orders, repair costs, availability of spare parts and other maintenance functions that allow you to have total control over your inventory and equipment.
Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) compliance is an important factor in crew visits, so ensuring that the right safety equipment is available for each work order is essential. From condition monitoring and compliance to document management and preventive maintenance, organizations can keep the pulse of each activity to ensure that operations run safely and effectively.
Hospitals and Clinics
Not only are hospitals one of the most critical parts of a city’s infrastructure, they usually operate 24/7 and require extremely demanding uptimes. Ensuring that hospital life support systems work properly means keeping all essential parts in inventory and keeping critical components well maintained. Whether surgical tools, X-ray machines or blood supply, few hospitals can survive without a well-designed inventory and maintenance software.
The importance of maintenance extends to well beyond the operational activities of hospitals and clinics. Heating, cooling, lighting, rubbish disposal, and water filtration plants all require maintenance and proper care. Efficiently dealing with the ‘back-end’ parts of the hospital’s administration leads to huge savings.
Conclusion
Clearly, businesses from various industries that have a large stake in their equipment running smoothly can benefit from the use of a maintenance CMMS. With the competitive advantage offered by a quality maintenance management software, a company can avoid wasting time or money due to downtime or production losses.
To have higher quality control and gain customer satisfaction, it is essential to proactively maintain equipment and stay abreast of in-field developments through mobile systems and reporting.