Asset Intelligence and Management

Asset Intelligence and Management

EZOfficeInventory Blogs 7 Ways Cmms Benefits Your Business And Reduces Maintenance Costs

7 Ways CMMS Benefits Your Business and Reduces Maintenance Costs

7 Ways CMMS Benefits Your Business and Reduces Maintenance Costs

From managing maintenance and service requests at a medium-sized enterprise to keeping track of ongoing equipment maintenance at a large construction site, a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is an extremely useful tool for your business’ needs.

When choosing a CMMS system, businesses look for preventive maintenance, seamless equipment management, solid asset assignments, and insightful maintenance reports, which should lead to reduced maintenance costs.

Benefits of using CMMS

From managing maintenance and service requests at a medium-sized enterprise to keeping track of ongoing equipment maintenance at a large construction site, a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is an extremely useful tool for your business’ needs.

When choosing a CMMS system, businesses look for preventive maintenance, seamless equipment management, solid asset assignments, insightful maintenance reports, which should lead to reduced maintenance costs.

1. Prolong your asset’s life with preventative maintenance system

If you do not implement a preventive maintenance program and let items wear out, you will be spending a lot on replacement costs. For example, if a staff member does not keep a regular check on equipment against corrosion, there is a chance that it could break suddenly. This can cause you higher repair costs as compared to the minimal cost if a proper equipment maintenance plan was in place. 

Preventative maintenance allows you to catch any faults in your equipment before they cause your workflows to break down. Implementing CMMS helps in preserving assets, ensuring they have the maximum life expectancy and keeping things running in optimum condition while still saving time and money.

Moreover, preventive maintenance software helps you stock inventory smarter and track equipment better. It stores data on items that may include:

  • Documents and Images related to the part of an equipment or asset. 
  • Serial Number of the part. Enter additional data with custom fields. 
  • Vendor details. 
  • Associated asset or equipment. 
  • Stock quantity threshold (or the minimum amount of the part you need in inventory). 
  • Different states i.e. available, checked out, audited, checked in, under maintenance, retired, etc.

2. Track recurring service and maintenance costs

CMMS software enables businesses to manage maintenance operations that help in keeping them viable and strong for producing quality goods and services every year. This improves the service quality, quicker response times and better collaboration.

With equipment maintenance software, you can set recurring services on items associated with a group, define how often you want services to repeat, and establish start and end dates for effortless maintenance management. That said, you can also set your account to automatically send assets into maintenance after an item is checked in. This will ensure that equipment is always in the best state before it is checked out again.

Preventive maintenance software enables you to analyze your cost data, not just keep logs of it. Tracking recurring service and maintenance costs enables you to make strategic, cost-cutting decisions. Say, if a particular division in your company is going through spare parts quicker than it should, then you’ll need to investigate that i.e. ensure that staff members are putting equipment into maintenance carefully at regular intervals and using the resources provided appropriately.

Efficient CMMS solutions help facilities managers save time and money while keeping the maintenance operations going smoothly. It enables you to create calendar-based work orders automatically while taking care of recurring tasks, such as battery replacements or periodic machine lubrication. Work order management can be automated on the basis of the machine part’s condition. For example, preventive maintenance software can generate vehicle work orders automatically at specified mileage intervals. This can be very useful for those into the manufacturing and construction sectors.

3. Reduce downtime

With better command on preventive maintenance tasks, you can reduce equipment downtime and increase uptime. According to one study, downtime costs can be up to $22,000/minute – you better keep on top of preventing asset unexpected breakages. You should prioritize and automate maintenance tasks in your organization as they are critical to a business’ success. 

Computerized maintenance management system ensures minimal downtime for your equipment in various ways. It makes use of data to ensure efficient scheduling, preventing any major interruptions in your business’ workflows. This means that CMMS will enable you to schedule maintenance during low-impact times or in times when certain equipment is not needed. It also ensures that the right personnel and replacement equipment are available prior to an equipment’s maintenance. 

4. Improve inventory control management

Having your maintenance team wait on parts to arrive is frustrating and time-consuming. For example, during delays in work orders on a regular basis due to non-availability of inventory and parts on order. CMMS comes with inventory control and management tools. These allow maintenance managers to ensure that critical parts are available whenever required.

With a CMMS in place, businesses have more control over their inventory and spare parts, making inventory management smarter. Inventory management software can do the following: 

  • Set min and max quantity thresholds.
  • Send email alerts on low inventory levels. 
  • Provide detailed information on vendors and parts costs. 
  • Generate purchase orders when required. 
  • Track insights on parts usage and costs. 
  • Reduce theft scenarios.

When tracking items and parts from one location with related information like inventory ID, work order category, equipment model, and vendor, you’ll be able to understand inventory across the organization faster. This eliminates redundancy in purchasing parts and equipment. An inventory management software helps businesses move parts between locations, preventing them from running overstock or understock by setting stock quantity thresholds. It makes it easier for managers to keep checks on equipment and inventory records, and avoid missing expensive equipment.

5. Evaluate employee performance with CMMS

Without preventive maintenance software, it’s difficult to measure employee performance regularly. Most companies assign paperwork orders to staff members and put them away when finished. There is no way to figure out who was assigned for which work order, how well they performed it, and how long it took to finish. This causes inefficiency in equipment maintenance and hard to reward people based on their performance or motivate staff members who had trouble finishing work orders. 

CMMS saves you from the hassle of skimming through numerous files and spreadsheets. You can now ask for asset audit or verify possession – know whether they have completed their asset assignments or not. Filter out completed and pending work orders with the help of using equipment management software. Keep track of key metrics with user-friendly graphs and insights that help you scale productivity, overtime, costs incurred, date of service completion. All this and more is tracked under maintenance history, and proper actions are taken for problematic areas.

A preventive maintenance solution enables you to distribute the right tools for maintenance best methods across your entire organization. Templates for preventive maintenance and repair procedures can be standardized using detailed work order management. You can also configure access-control settings across the organization to limit staff members from using resources inefficiently and let the managers handle the maintenance procedures.

6. Vendor selection for repair and maintenance

CMMS can be used to get insights on what you’ve purchased from where or should we call it from which vendor and how often you purchase orders from that particular vendor. Say, have you placed orders of the same part multiple times from the same vendor? If yes, then you have the hint right there that there’s some issue with the quality the current vendor is providing you. Time to hit another store to go shopping for parts.

An equipment maintenance software helps you generate reports on vendors and the costs spent on the purchase orders. Reports are analyzed for efficient maintenance management and scheduling. A CMMS enables you to pick between vendors based on their effectiveness of service as well as costs charged

7. Increase safety and compliance

Equipment that has not been properly maintained can be a hazard for your employees, and at the same time increases the risk of your business running into compliance issues with the authorities. This can lead to workplace accidents or heavy fines being imposed based on your compliance practices. 

CMMS saves your business from such risks by keeping your equipment in great working condition. You can now meet any official safety standards in your region. It is able to achieve this by ensuring that all safety components of your equipment are in prime working condition. 

A computerized maintenance management system also saves you from a great deal of paperwork required during audits. Generate reports highlighting maintenance practices in order to demonstrate regulatory compliance and save your business from harsh penalties. 

With an increasingly competitive landscape businesses cannot set up their maintenance teams as reactive – fix things when it seems important. The idea is to work smarter and harder. Implementing CMMS helps in organizing maintenance schedules, managing assets and inventory control, tracking equipment parts, and prioritizing work orders and more. Spend time and money on delegating more important tasks than fixing things at double the price.

Unlike traditional software that requires you to download and install updates, cloud-based CMMS updates automatically. Each time you log into CMMS software, you’re always using the latest and greatest version.