Managing maintenance processes is not an easy task. While budgets for maintenance are steadily decreasing, ensuring the continous operation of machines and equipment requires increasing expertise and organization. This is when the need for software arises to simplify documentation and support organizational tasks.
When choosing the right software, it’s worth being cautious to ensure it genuinely assists in day-to-day operations. Below, we offer some criteria to guide your decision.
Ease of Use
It’s crucial that the maintenance software is easy to use, as maintenance staff, production teams, and management will need to use it on a daily bases. The interface should be clear and logical. There should be no need to consider where to click to access specific functions.
Maintenance Interface
For maintenance staff, easy and quick access to the interface they use is essential. They need a workspace where they can overview daily tasks and be guided through documenting work orders. It’s advantageous if the software is usable on a tablet or phone, allowing work orders to be filled out directly next to the machine without needing to return to the office.
Maintenance Planning
An ideal CMMS software helps develop an appropriate maintenance plan, allowing for time-based, condition-based, or even predictive maintenance. It provides a clear interface for tracking the implementation of the plan, and a notification system assists in preparing for tasks. In larger teams, it may be essential to assign tasks according to team members’ schedules.
Access Rights
In larger organizations, it might be necessary to control access rights for various functions. Certain settings or maintenance planning functions may not need to be accessible to everyone. For fault reporting, consider who should have permission to send alerts.
Maintenance Materials
Nowadays, it’s expected to have a spare parts list for equipment. In a good maintenance software, this list can be easily created, maintained, and queried.
Part of documenting a work order includes recording the materials used. If done within the CMMS software, linking work orders with materials used becomes automatic, making it easy to track material usage for each period or machine. Some software also manages material storage with in-out documentation, allowing for automatic inventory deduction based on work orders and visibility into future material needs.
Reports
To ensure maintenance activities run effectively, monitoring results is essential. In addition to MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) and MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) reports, tracking downtimes, maintenance hours, and individual team performance yields valuable insights.
Communication with Other Software, Data Import Capabilities
Often, an existing maintenance system needs to be transferred to the new software. Check if existing data—like lists of machines or past maintenance records—can be imported or if they must be manually input.
Data synchronization with other software can also be important. With large teams and high turnover, having employee data automatically updated from the HR system can ease the burden. Synchronizing the machine list or maintenance materials may also be necessary.
As our machines become more automated, we aim to elevate our processes’ automation level. For instance, if the software can receive signals from our equipment, it can automatically initiate a work order in case of a stoppage or monitor the downtime. Effective predictive maintenance also requires regularly transferring measurement values for certain characteristics.
Support
It’s beneficial to clarify what support the software provider offers for ongoing use. Flexible assistance during setup and initial challenges, as well as support in your language, can be crucial. Reporting issues and handling complaints efficiently can impact the software’s smooth operation.
Additional Useful Features
Checklists
During maintenance, specific tasks need to be completed. Organizing these into checklists, where maintenance personnel can mark tasks as completed with one click, is valuable. The tasks may vary depending on the maintenance cycle (weekly, monthly, annually, etc.), so it’s worth checking if the selected CMMS can assign different tasks to different cycles.
Group Settings
If your equipment consists of similar types, look for software where planning or task list editing can be done by group, not on an individual machine basis.