Posted by
BA . on Wed, Feb 15, 2012 @ 12:19 PM
Complex planning required!
With several different types of equipment it can be hard to figure out the best times to schedule preventative maintenance. Some maintenance may take several days to complete causing issues with operations/ production who need the equipment to be available and functioning. Several periods during the year can be bad because they are peak production times, seasonally busy or busy due to planned customer deliveries. Besides this even if the equipment may be idle after hours because it is not used throughout the day, you need to make sure it is back up and functioning at the start of a new day. All this can result in the need for some fairly complex planning!
How an equipment maintenance calendar can help
A good way to manage all this complexity is by putting together an equipment maintenance calendar which shows you which equipment is scheduled for preventive maintenance and when it is scheduled. This also allows you to schedule multiple preventive maintenance tasks on a machine at the same time or close together so that all can be accomplished with minimum disruption at idle times. In many seasonal operations or manufacturing plants there are shutdown times that may last for a few days during the holidays or can be a few months (e.g. for an amusement park operation). This is usually a very good time to plan such preventative maintenance activities.
Create the calendar with your CMMS/ maintenance software
Making such a calendar can be made a lot easier using features of your CMMS/ maintenance software. You should be able to define calendars with working hours, off days and seasonal off periods. These calendars can be associated with equipment or maintenance tasks. The software can use such information to help you put together a calendar of preventative maintenance work over several months into the future. You can use these calendars to discuss with operations/ production to see if any work needs to be rescheduled or changed to better suit their needs. You can then go back to the CMMS/ maintenance software and make adjustments to the preventative maintenance task schedules to do schedule adjustments that can accommodate such operational needs.
Don't have CMMS/ maintenance management software?
If you do not have CMMS/ maintenance software that you can use to create such a calendar you can download and try out a fully functional 30-day trial of FastMaint CMMS for maintenance management.
Posted by
BA . on Thu, Feb 02, 2012 @ 02:08 PM
Work order time (duration) is not the same as equipment downtime. Why? Because an equipment may fail at 1 pm and the work order to repair it is scheduled at 3 pm. The technician may do a temporary fix to get the machine running again while he
waits for a part to come in stock. The work order is still open. The part comes in the next day and the work order gets completed the next day at 11 am. So the actual equipment downtime may only be from 1 pm to 4 pm and the next day from 10 am to 11 am when the work order is completed. This is about 4 hours of downtime. The actual time spent on the work order is 2 hours (3 pm to 4p m on the first day and 10 am to 11 am the next day). Make sure that reports from your CMMS/ maintenance software are not confusing the two. Ideally your CMMS/ maintenance software should have some way to log when an equipment is unavailable and also why it is unavailable. Equipment could be unavailable for a variety of reasons, many of which may have nothing to do with the equipment e.g. power problems, operators no available, assembly line issues, inspections, etc. This way you can separate the different reasons why an equipment is not available and collect actual statistics on downtime due to equipment problems.
Most new equipment these days have a way to create log files of activity that can be imported into the CMMS/ maintenance software. This makes it easier to collect the information and not depend on operator or maintenance personnel reports for equipment downtime calculation. Check the equipment manufacturer’s documentation to see if it is possible to have the equipment automatically export these logs (ideally as simple text files) to a common folder on your computer network. Once all these files are being regularly collected you can have your CMMS/ maintenance software regularly import them in. You may need to do some customization/ changes to these export files since each equipment manufacturer may have their own export format. Your IT Department may be able to help you create procedures convert all these different formats to a single standard format that your CMMS/ maintenance software or other analysis software can use.
How useful is equipment downtime information?
Being able to review equipment downtime information can help you identify potential causes that may need to be addressed and help reduce future downtime incidents. For example if you see monthly downtime spiking repeatedly for some equipment you will want to investigate why. Reasons could be as varied as improperly trained operators, poor maintenance practices, equipment close to end of its useful life, etc. Critical equipment when not available has effects felt organization wide – production may be lost, quality may suffer and customers may experience delays getting products/ services. Besides reviewing the downtime data you may wish to do some statistical analysis if it is especially critical equipment. Even if the CMMS/ maintenance software does not offer such statistical analysis tools, you may be able to export this data to third-party tools that can do statistical calculations (e.g. a Weibull Failure Analysis).
Looking for CMMS software (maintenance management software)?
Don’t have maintenance software that you can use to get such reports? You can download and try out a fully functional 30-day trial of FastMaint CMMS for maintenance management.
Posted by
BA . on Mon, Jan 23, 2012 @ 11:22 AM
Many maintenance managers are dissatisfied and feel that they are not properly utilizing their CMMS/ maintenance management software. This is quite surprising considering that in many cases their organizations may have spent thousands of dollars on purchasing the product, training and ongoing maintenance. The CMMS software should work for you – not you for the CMMS software! The following tips can help you select a winner and become a satisfied CMMS customer.
1) Avoid runaway selection criteria: In many cases the problems starts up at the selection phase. Selection criteria for purchasing a new CMMS software package should be based on what you can make use of immediately or in the near future – not what everyone thinks you must be able to do. We have seen 30-40 page requests for proposal with literally hundreds of features requested. Considering the amount of work that it would require users to put into the CMMS software you can be quite sure that most of these features will never be used! Others could be nice to have items that are not really workable in practice. For example a requirement that the CMMS software supports a variety of smart phones. It looks like a nice feature, but how many organizations are going to issue their maintenance personnel with smart phones and pay for monthly data plans! If they do, do they have a budget to keep repairing/ replacing them if the phones get damaged when used in industrial environments or someone drops a tool on them? In such cases it really makes sense for the maintenance manager to get involved early in the specification phase and ruthlessly cut out requirements that are not needed for the job.
2) Be wary when training/ consulting services are offered: Many vendors may offer substantial training on the CMMS software – but requiring a lot of training to use the software should really be a big RED flag! Why? How many maintenance departments have the time and resources to send their maintenance teams for training? Maintenance technicians should get training on doing maintenance related tasks – not spend their time getting training on how to use CMMS software. Another red flag is if a lot of consulting time is being offered. This means that you are going to be spending a lot of time just getting the CMMS system setup. You are also most likely to be spending a lot of money buying additional consulting services.
3) Don’t get swept away by great customer reviews/ references: When looking at customer reviews/ testimonials remember that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. So glowing customer testimonials/ references while nice to have should not lead you to the wrong choice. What may be a good work flow/ features for one customer may not work very well for you.
4) Try before you buy: Look around for products that you can try out first. You should be able to get a trial period to use a fully functional version of the CMMS software so that you can try it out before you buy it. An added bonus would be if such products allow you to easily convert from the trial to the full version while retaining all the data you already entered.
5) Give your feedback: Take the time to provide your feedback & suggestions to the CMMS software vendor. While this may not help you immediately it can help you a lot in the long run. If many customers are requesting particular features – in many cases the software vendor will try to implement them and you will get it in a future release especially if you have also purchased ongoing support & upgrades.
Bottom line look for something that is easy to use and can start helping you right away. Avoid CMMS software products that may have complex work flows and require you to jump through hoops to get things done. This is why getting a trial and trying it out before you buy is essential.
Download The CMMS/ Maintenance Management Software Guide
For a more in-depth review of different selection criteria you can use, download a free guide that can help you evaluate different maintenance software to see how well they will fit your requirements.
Posted by
BA . on Fri, Jan 06, 2012 @ 12:04 PM
Well it’s the start of a New Year! Besides all your other New Year Resolutions, here is another one - do an annual audit of all your maintenance activities for the last year. Though it sounds tedious, it is a good thing to do and can help you identify problem areas, scope for improvement and where you are doing really well.
What Should You Be Doing In The Audit?
- Collect information on all the work orders you did last year. If you have maintenance management software this will not be hard to do. The software should be able to give you a variety of analysis reports for specific periods so that you can see how you are doing. In addition you may be able to do an export of all work orders for the last year to do more detailed analysis with other tools – e.g. export to a comma delimited file, open with spreadsheet software (such as Microsoft Excel) and do more complex analysis & charting.
- Separate unplanned maintenance from planned/ preventative maintenance. Group all the maintenance work that was done into two “buckets” or categories – unplanned/ breakdown maintenance and planned/ preventative maintenance. These are two different types of data and they should be analyzed separately.
- Under unplanned work orders look for equipment that seems to be failing frequently or require a lot of unplanned maintenance. This may be a sign that the equipment needs replacement or maintenance is not being done correctly. If problems seem to occur more frequently after certain maintenance team members are doing the maintenance, it may be a sign that the maintenance work is not being done correctly. They may be skipping steps or do not have the training or experience to identify potential issues that will cause future problems. Another clue is if the work orders are being flagged as problem work orders – they are taking too much time to complete or are getting delayed because maintenance technicians are finding additional problems. Another cause could be bad spare parts. If your suppliers are sending parts that fail before their expected life – you are going to see a lot of unexpected maintenance whenever they fail!
- Under planned/ preventative maintenance work orders look for the equipment that seems to be taking the most of your time and money. It is possible that the equipment can be replaced with newer equipment that needs less preventive maintenance. Get an idea of how much such equipment is costing you to maintain and see if cheaper alternatives are available. Besides this check and see if some of the preventive maintenance is overkill – review manufacturer’s recommendations and see if you are doing more than is necessary.
- Check you maintenance parts usage. Your maintenance software should be able to give you reports of parts you have used over the year. See if you can identify possible bad batches of parts or suppliers who provide poorer quality parts. Identifying bad parts can help you identify equipment that may need pre-emptive maintenance because maintenance was done with bad parts from a bad batch. You can also drop suppliers that tend to sell poor quality parts. Spare part costs are a very significant part of most maintenance budgets and improving parts management can help save a lot of money (and time since you will have less breakdowns because of bad parts).
What You Should Learn From The Audit
At the end of your audit you should have a good idea of potential problem areas, where you can improve and where you are doing well. This kind of information becomes more valuable as you keep repeating these audits – you can see if you are performing better from year to year. While reviews at shorter periods e.g. quarterly or semi-annual are also useful, a yearly audit can help smooth out performance fluctuations caused by seasonal changes. Examples of seasonal changes are equipment running at maximum load to satisfy holiday demand or HVAC issues at the start of winter or summer – these can cause maintenance spikes that can make it hard to compare performance against a prior quarter.
The Importance Of Good CMMS/ Maintenance Management Software
Ultimately to produce useful results you need to be able to collect a lot of data for analysis. This is where good CMMS/ maintenance management software can help – so make sure you have a package that is able to collect and give you back all this data.
If you are looking for a CMMS/ maintenance software program you can download and try out a fully functional 30-day trial of FastMaint CMMS.
Posted by
BA . on Fri, Dec 16, 2011 @ 11:48 AM
Many organizations have equipment that is several years old, maybe even several decades old. In fact there are quite a few that still use machines that are over a hundred years old! Just because equipment is old does not automatically mark it for replacement. There are several factors to consider when to finally bid goodbye to a piece of equipment.
- Can you still get spare parts? How much does it cost annually in spare parts to keep the equipment running? Your maintenance software can help by giving you detailed reports of spare parts use and costs over the year for different equipment.
- Is better equipment available? Sometime even if the equipment is still very functional it may make sense to upgrade and buy newer equipment because productivity is higher or maintenance costs are a lot less. Your maintenance software can give you an idea of the annual maintenance costs and downtime of the equipment you are considering for replacement.
- Is the equipment breaking down more frequently? Use maintenance software reports to get an idea of maintenance being done on the equipment over time. If you see trends that tell you that the equipment is breaking down more often or is needed a lot more maintenance it may be time to consider replacing it.
- Is the quality of the products being made by the equipment declining/ are you getting a lot of performance related complaints in spite of regular maintenance? This can be a sign of an equipment that needs replacement but can also be a sign of poor maintenance practices. Review who is doing the maintenance work and check work order feedback for signs that maintenance procedure are not being properly followed.
- Is most of your maintenance budget and time being spent on a few equipment? If you know that there are comparable equipment that need less maintenance that you can use instead, it may be time to seriously retire the “trouble makers” that are consuming most of your resources. Your maintenance software reports that can compare historical costs of different equipment can help you pinpoint the equipment to investigate.
- Do you still have the skills available to keep the equipment running in top condition? This is especially of importance when dealing with very old and complex equipment. You may only one or two craftspeople who know how to keep the equipment running. Unless you are able to implement a program of skills transfer to other personnel you may run the risk of not having the capability to fix the equipment when it breaks in future. If you have a lot of equipment you can identify such skills bottlenecks by looking at personnel usage reports in your maintenance software that show which personnel worked on which jobs over a period of time. If you see the same few people always called on to do maintenance on some of the equipment this may be a sign that you have a possible skills shortage for these equipment.
Looking for CMMS software (maintenance management software)?
Don’t have maintenance software that you can use to get such reports? You can download and try out a fully functional 30-day trial of FastMaint CMMS for maintenance management.
Posted by
BA . on Thu, Dec 08, 2011 @ 11:03 AM
Equipment spare parts management can be quite a challenge especially if you have several different types of equipment – each needing it own set of unique set of parts that are required for unplanned and preventive maintenance on the equipment. Equipment spares can also be quite expensive and contribute significantly to the maintenance budget.
How to improve your maintenance spare parts management
1) Identify parts required for different maintenance tasks and try to estimate usage over the next few months based on the equipment preventive maintenance schedules. This will help better manage inventory requirements and costs. Holding inventory you do not need for several months adds to costs.
2) Depending on your suppliers (vendors) you may want to explore use of “just in time” inventory – order & get parts just before maintenance jobs are to be done. At the same time try to avoid job delays because parts are not available. While costs of certain parts may be significant they are probably much less than the costs due to lost production or cascading equipment failures.
3) Try to identify & classify reliable suppliers (vendors) for all parts. Poor quality components can result in premature failures and additional maintenance work. Maintenance records can be useful to identify suppliers of quality parts. Corporate purchasing requirements may sometimes dictate your choice of suppliers but it can be possible to work with your purchasing department especially if you have statistics about vendor quality & reliability.
How you can utilize your CMMS/ maintenance management software to help
Experts estimate that organizations can save between 5-10% on their yearly spare parts inventory costs with maintenance management software/ CMMS. A good maintenance management product can better track inventory, when to restock items and quickly identify parts that are no longer required (because the equipment is retired). You can find out how many parts of each type you will need for preventive maintenance tasks for each quarter by using planning reports to calculate parts and quantities needed. This can help you apply for volume discounts when ordering parts/ spares as you will know how many you will need in advance. You also need to keep less inventory on hand because the maintenance management software can warn you when each part/ spare falls below reorder levels.
How to find the right CMMS/ maintenance management software
Get a free guide that can help you evaluate different maintenance software to see how well they will fit your requirements.
Posted by
BA . on Wed, Nov 30, 2011 @ 12:28 PM
1) Keep detailed records of work done. This makes it much easier to see where one needs improvement as well as identify areas where one is doing well – something that is very important to show stakeholders & management. It may be tempting to use spreadsheets or a homegrown database to keep track of work due and work done. However, the volume of data to be managed will soon make it difficult to review trends or keep accurate track of work done. Much useful information will not be recorded and there is a tendency to miss work that needs to be done. This is where computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) can help.
2) Follow equipment manufacturers recommended maintenance schedules and log them. This will help maximize equipment life. Detailed maintenance records will also be useful to get better pricing if the equipment can be sold at the end of its useful life. Try to get manufacturer information on expected failure rates and repair costs. These can be useful benchmarks to measure your performance with the equipment.
3) Standardize maintenance schedules and tasks. Have pictures, checklists and steps printed on each work order. This will reduce variance between work done by different maintenance team members.
4) Don’t forget to plan to preventive maintenance! Preventive maintenance can have a significant impact in more ways than one. Besides increased asset life it can reduce the need for redundant equipment due to reductions in unplanned downtime. Reducing redundant equipment & the need for earlier replacement of equipment has a financial impact that goes all the way to company financial statements & operating efficiency.
5) Try to “audit” work done on a regular basis. Not only review actual work done, also look at subsequent failure & repair history reports. It is possible that some parts of a job being done incorrectly can cause earlier equipment failure or the need for replacement parts earlier than required.
CMMS software (maintenance management software) can make this easier!
Doing all this can be quite challenging without a software package to remind you and collect the information you need. If you do not already have a maintenance software package you can download a 30-Day fully functional trial of FastMaint CMMS and see how it works for you.
Posted by
BA . on Thu, Nov 17, 2011 @ 03:45 PM
Why Maintenance Planning Can Be A Challenge
Planning maintenance work can be a challenge because it normally consists of two different types of maintenance:
- Unplanned or emergency maintenance to fix equipment breakdowns or other urgent work as it comes up
- Planned or preventative maintenance to keep systems/ equipment running in peak condition
How does one consolidate and manage these two types of jobs? How can one allocate maintenance technicians and work hours in the daily calendar to get both types of work accomplished? Many maintenance programs have grown organically over the years and end up mainly doing breakdown/ unplanned maintenance. Technicians work in fire fighting mode and preventative planned maintenance typically takes a hit. Not doing preventative maintenance on time (or not at all!) results in further unexpected equipment breakdowns and further emergency maintenance work.
Maintenance Planning Tips
1) Since unplanned/ breakdown maintenance by its very nature is unpredictable, try to build in buffer time to handle such work. Break each day or week into periods for planned maintenance based on category A (must be done), B (should be done sometime soon) and C (nice to do). Unplanned maintenance can be scheduled as needed around time for category C or even category B maintenance. This can help prevent cascading maintenance issues and associated continuous firefighting.
2) Make sure to allot enough time & resources for regular preventative maintenance in the maintenance plan
3) The operating principle when handling any large multi-day, multi-team maintenance job should be “divide and conquer”. Break the whole job down into separate tasks that can be done by different teams or personnel. Here a good CMMS program can help you split the job into separate tasks and “chain” them together so that each sub-task is completed when the prior one is done
4) Get a good maintenance management software product (CMMS software) that will help you manage both unplanned as well as planned maintenance in a single interface.
5) Remember that estimates should be based on the person who will be doing the job not on the experience of someone who may be an expert at this job. Inexperienced personnel will take more time to complete many jobs. Having unrealistic estimates will cause backlog and can completely ruin an otherwise well thought out maintenance plan.
6) When making maintenance plans build in time for recording, updating & reviewing information. Otherwise these elements will be the first to be skipped.
7) Put together a maintenance calendar of work to be done in the next month, quarter or year by equipment/ and location. This can be useful to show & discuss with production/ operations managers. Items may need to be rescheduled or grouped together to reduce the time equipment is unavailable due to maintenance work or identify conflicts due to production/ operations deadlines. This is another area where a good CMMS/ maintenance software can help since it makes it easier to reschedule and move around jobs.
Looking for CMMS software (maintenance management software)?
You can download a 30-Day fully functional trial of FastMaint CMMS.
Posted by
BA . on Mon, Nov 07, 2011 @ 02:54 PM
No matter what the company, keeping your equipment running smoothly and efficiently is of the utmost importance when it comes to productivity and money. Preventative maintenance is a key process that should not be overlooked. E.I. DuPont de Nemours Co. (Delaware) reported that "The largest, single controllable expenditure in a plant is maintenance, and in many plants the maintenance budget exceeds annual net profit." (1996).
In many organizations maintenance management software is not fully utilized or not utilized at all. Frequently maintenance managers make plans on paper or use spreadsheets to schedule preventative maintenance work.
The Drawbacks of Manual Maintenance Checks
Any maintenance manager who starts a schedule of the maintenance that needs to be done and who draws up a set plan for each item of equipment in the factory or plant, will have to follow up individually with each item on that list and ensure that the maintenance was carried out properly. This is a time consuming process which over 90% of maintenance managers cannot allocate resources to on a regular basis. This means that one or more of the following takes place:
- The maintenance falls behind, slowing productivity.
- The maintenance is not completed accurately, allowing for future problems.
- The maintenance is not carried out as often as is necessary for some items, reducing equipment life
Why Use Maintenance Management Software?
Whatever the case, one of the easiest and most cost effective ways of combating this problem is to invest in maintenance management software. This will allow the managers to set protocols out and specify the maintenance schedules for each area and each item of equipment. The software can also be set to dictate what pieces need more maintenance than others.
The benefits of using maintenance management software include:
- Better scheduling of equipment maintenance so as to reduce downtime
- Allows you to collect & reuse the expertise you need to finish the maintenance procedures accurately
- Helps reduce maintenance personnel burnout by better work scheduling
- Can help reduce expensive breakdown maintenance by better organizing and tracking planned preventative maintenance
- Can help increase equipment usable life by better scheduling preventative maintenance
- Better tracking and use of maintenance parts & spares – this can be a major cost item!
- Gives you the ability to stay up to date with the machines and any progress or problems that come up
Finding The Right Maintenance Management Software
Get a free guide that can help you evaluate different maintenance software to see how well they will fit your requirements.
Posted by
BA . on Tue, Oct 25, 2011 @ 04:05 PM
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.
How does one find the right CMMS software?
Get a free guide that can help you evaluate different maintenance software to see how well they will fit your requirements.
