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A computerised maintenance management system (or âCMMS’ for short) is a software package that maintains a database of information about a company’s maintenance operations.
Sometimes known as enterprise asset management, a CMMS is designed with maintenance workers and management personnel in mind. The purpose of a CMMS is to help them perform their work more efficiently, for example, the system can notify them which machinery or equipment require maintenance, and the location of spare parts needed to perform such maintenance work.
Maintenance department goals, and CMMS requirements
The main goals of any firm’s maintenance department are to optimise the use of any resources such as manpower, equipment, materials, and money.
Because a maintenance department is responsible for maintaining any equipment and facilities within its remit, a CMMS needs to provide maintenance managers the power to oversee all maintenance processes, from the point of equipment and material acquisition to their disposal.
In short – management will need to know at any given time what work has been done, where it has been carried out, and how much it has cost.
What can a CMMS do for my business?
Here are some of the key points of what a CMMS can do for your business:
- Maintenance inventory – know exactly what equipment, tools and materials you have at your disposal at any given moment;
- Work history – find out who has performed maintenance tasks for any specified equipment;
- Manage workload – assign work tasks to maintenance workers so that they and management know exactly what jobs need to be completed;
- Analyse performance – in order to have an efficient maintenance department, you will need to know how well your staff are performing so that you can address any areas of concern;
- Planning ahead – if you have a maintenance department that is responsible for ensuring the functionality of machines and equipment especially in time-critical applications, then a CMMS can help you to plan maintenance jobs in the future so that no vital repair work is ever forgotten about;
- Save time and money – because a CMMS provides a centralised asset management and maintenance tracking system, your company will save time and money on unnecessary administration or purchases, particularly in cases where a large cache of spare parts needs to be maintained.
Health and safety planning
Another great thing that a CMMS can do for your business is help you to organise any health and safety plans for scheduled maintenance work.
For example, if your business offers telecommunication services and you need to perform any repair work or hardware checks in network equipment located inside street cabinets, a CMMS can help you to ensure that you have stock of safety equipment such as road cones and warning signs, high visibility jackets for workers, tools, and it can also make sure that all resources are assigned to the relevant maintenance workers.
Next steps
Now that you have seen some of the benefits that having a maintenance management system in place for your company can bring, you will no doubt have some questions about how certain elements of a CMMS can fit in with your company’s existing systems and processes. As each business has a different set of requirements, you will need to seek the expert advice of a firm that provides asset management services, so that you can have a CMMS tailored to your exact needs.
