Four Top Ways A CMMS Can Help You Manage Big Data

If you spend a lot of time putting out fires with panic fixes when a machine goes kaput and threatens a bottleneck in your manufacturing process, if you find it more and more difficult to stretch your resources to cover necessary maintenance or other expenditures, if you want to standardize procedures across your business to make your product a winner every time, you need a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to manage big data.

Every bit of information you can get your hands on is valuable in today’s business environment, and data no longer sits in separate silos. Now it can be combined to give you new insights into your company’s future.

A CMMS manages your big data — all the information from work orders, maintenance programs, order processing software such as asset and supplier histories, and all the other paperwork that documents your system — in four important ways.

Good Software Can Put an End to Panic Fixes

Computer maintenance management software can help you analyze work orders and maintenance logs to monitor machine performance from day to day and week to week. That helps you spot potential problems before they become disasters. Once you have that capability, you control over when and how you maintain your business assets, making maintenance proactive instead of reactive.

Insight from CMMS Helps Stretch Limited Resources

With computerized analysis, you know where your money, workers, and machines or other assets can be used to best effect. Once the computer synthesizes information from diverse sources — order processing software, vehicle maintenance software, and other asset maintenance programs — you’ll see a bigger picture. Maybe your trucks could take more efficient routes, you could cut the frequency of deliveries from suppliers, or you could replace an asset that’s been racking up small fixes that add up to big expenditures over time.

It Helps Document Certification and Audit Procedures

In today’s global markets, it’s important to have a process that results in a top-notch product that’s reliable time after time. Once clients know they can rely on your business, they’ll come back again and again — and spread the word.

To do that, you need every employee on board, making sure things get done the right way every time. A good CMMS can help you build checklists your workers can refer to as they work. It even gives you a way to retain the intelligence that used to be lost when a long-time employee retired or left so that even the newest workers understand the reasons behind some of your procedures.

Using a CMMS Helps Build a Culture of Accountability

No one wants to believe workers would deliberately cut corners or do slipshod work, but it can happen. System maintenance services can help pinpoint who does what and when so you can reward excellent employees and get potential problem workers the help they need to become valued members of your organization.

You can also automate work requests so the burden no longer falls on faulty human memory. Once the requests are made, they become part of the system’s cache of data. Maintenance histories print out at the click of a button, documenting all the steps taken — and that protects you and your hard-working employees.

Big data has incredible potential to change the way business is done. By combining, comparing, and synthesizing bits and pieces of information that in the past might have seemed irrelevant or inconsequential, a CMMS can help you streamline and improve your process, show you where to use valuable resources and assets, and increase your bottom line — and that’s important for you and everyone who works for you.