Computerized Maintenance Management Software or CMMS systems are becoming increasingly popular, primarily due to the organization and savings that they bring a company. The easily quantifiable savings like staff reduction and higher production volumes are tangible benefits delivered almost immediately to companies. But are there savings beyond the easily visible?
What Do CMMS Systems Do?
CMMS systems are software tools used to manage and streamline maintenance processes in a facility or organization. CMMS systems are used to track, schedule, and manage maintenance tasks, equipment, and inventory.
One of the best features of CMMS systems is work order management. This feature of the CMMS systems feature allows maintenance teams to create, assign, and track work orders and monitor maintenance tasks’ progress in real-time. CMMS systems can also manage inventory levels, ensuring that necessary equipment and spare parts are always in stock when needed.
Another vital feature of CMMS systems is preventative maintenance scheduling. With features like these, maintenance teams can schedule routine maintenance tasks based on time or usage, reducing the risk of equipment failures and downtime when using CMMS systems. This helps to the reliability of equipment and prolongs its useful life.
CMMS systems also offer reporting and analytics capabilities that provide insights into maintenance operations, including market trends, equipment performance, and scheduled maintenance costs. Using this information from CMMS systems, organizations can make data-driven decisions to optimize maintenance operations and reduce costs.
By using CMMS systems vendors to track, schedule, and manage maintenance tasks, equipment, and inventory, organizations can increase the reliability of their equipment, reduce downtime, and improve the efficiency of their maintenance operations. CMMS systems’ reporting and analytics capabilities can help organizations make data-driven decisions to optimize maintenance operations and reduce operational costs.
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Is CMMS an ERP system?
No, CMMS systems are not the same as Enterprise Resource Planning systems. While both methods are used to manage business operations, they serve different purposes in managing business processes. A CMMS system is specifically designed for maintenance management, while an ERP system is used for managing all aspects of a business, including finance, human resources, inventory, and customer relations. While CMMS systems may be integrated with an ERP system to share information and streamline business processes, they are two different systems with different functions and features that make them unique.
What Are the Benefits of CMMS Systems?
Beyond the hard-dollar savings (quantifiable), there is a wealth of intangible soft-dollar CMMS systems benefits and savings. Traditional soft-dollar benefits include improved customer retention levels and lower employee turnover. Often overlooked soft-dollar benefits of CMMS systems and savings lead to:
- Higher employee morale
- Decrease employee turnover
- Better team collaboration and communication
- Increased corporate compliance
- Better overall customer experiences and higher satisfaction
- Reinforced information flow and retrieval
- Soft Dollar Benefits and Savings
- Regulatory Compliance
Most industries have specific regulatory compliance rules, which are the bane of most companies' existence. Employing CMMS systems ensures that your company complies with pesky compliance regulations. Compliance will ensure that you avoid penalties and possibly even win additional contracts, clients, or bonuses.
Quicker Response
When you have a system to ensure specific standards are in place, it is significantly easier to approve new regulations. For example, if a significant on-the-job accident happens, companies focus their attention on preventing such accidents in the future and often have to rush through approval processes. CMMS systems ensure regulations can be implemented and pass through approval processes with lightning speed.
Greater Employee Acceptance
Creating new rules, regulations, and processes is easy. They are getting your employees to follow them, which is more complex. CMMS systems ensure that all procedures, old and new, must be followed to the letter. With a CMMS system, your employees may follow your rules, leading to wasted time by management creating new solutions and lower productivity by staff employing a patchwork of regulations.
Fewer Breakdowns and Increased Up-Time
CMMS systems ensure that all machines and equipment are correctly cared for with scheduled maintenance plans, which must be followed to the letter. Schedule maintenance is often overlooked in busy output (when machines need care the most) without a CMMS system, and breakdowns occur. To calculate savings by reduced studies, think of the cost of your production being put out of commission for an hour. A day? A week?
Increased Asset Life
Scheduled maintenance ensures you have fewer breakdowns and reduced productivity and get the most out of your assets and machines. Proper care assures you the most extended life cycle possible, reducing the exorbitant costs of buying new appliances sooner than necessary.
What Industries Use CMMS Systems?
Here are some of the industries that have embraced CMMS systems in their regular operations:
Manufacturing
In addition to ERP systems in the manufacturing industry, their facilities rely heavily on machinery and equipment, making maintenance a critical function. CMMS systems help to ensure that manufacturing equipment is maintained correctly to reduce downtime and increase efficiency and productivity.
Healthcare
Hospitals and other healthcare facilities use CMMS systems to manage equipment maintenance and repair schedules, ensuring that vital equipment is always in working order.
Facilities Management
To ensure smooth operations, facilities managers use CMMS systems to maintain buildings and equipment, including HVAC systems, lighting, and plumbing.
Transportation
CMMS systems are used in the transportation industry to manage maintenance and repair schedules for vehicles such as buses, trains, and airplanes to ensure reliable public transportation.
Energy Sector
Energy companies use CMMS systems to manage the maintenance of power plants and other energy production facilities to ensure reliable service. CMMS systems also help maintain equipment and vehicles that produce and deliver energy.
By using CMMS systems to track and schedule maintenance tasks, organizations in industries like these have been able to reduce downtime, increase productivity, and prolong the life of their equipment, thus, reducing costs.
Managing an efficient and complex operation is a challenging feat. Worrying about unexpected breakdowns can be avoided with suitable systems in place. Hence, solutions like the best ERP software and CMMS systems provide solutions for businesses to stay prepared and focused on the task ahead.
