If you’re reading this article, chances are you own a car. And that car has a regular maintenance program—from regular oil changes to complete tune-ups, as well as recommended replacement of worn-out belts, brakes, tires, etc. (hopefully before they fail completely and cause a problem). The point is, preventative maintenance (PM) and predictive maintenance keeps your car running longer, saves you money, improves gas mileage, and allows you to enjoy the full use and benefits of your asset. Preventative car maintenance is a no-brainer. So why do so many organizations fail to see the short-term and long-term benefits of preventative maintenance management?
It doesn’t matter if you are an asset-intensive mining operation or oil refinery, or a small health care facility. In today’s global economic climate, every organization, from the local machine shop to huge international corporations, needs to realize the pivotal role that maintenance management can play in maximizing resources and profits.
According to Dan Towse, author of “Maintenance Drives the Nuts and Bolts of Sustainability” organizations “that established holistic preventative and predictive maintenance programs find that total costs can be reduced by 40% to 50%.” Consider the following ways that any organization, large or small, can use maintenance to help drive business success:
1. Think both “Big Picture” and “the Devil is in the Details.”
Maintenance technicians and managers can make a significant contribution to an organization’s productivity and sustainability. Creating a strategic maintenance management plan allows facility managers to link daily asset management to financial and risk management, improved facility safety, business performance, and sustainability initiatives.
Once the plan is in place, empower your maintenance staff to look beyond the regular maintenance tasks, and look deeper to gauge the overall history and health of the asset. Knowing the repair history, current work load, future demands, and energy usage gives you valuable information to help maximize performance, prevent downtime, and squeeze every available drop of productivity out of your asset investment.
2. Track, Measure, Report with Computer Maintenance Software.
By tracking asset performance trends, you can monitor key performance indicators and look for ways to reduce energy costs and increase productivity. In Towse’s article, he cites that US manufacturing energy costs are often higher than 25% of their total operating budget. Optimizing the value of your asset’s life cycle has a huge impact on bottom line profitability. Companies that think they are “too small” to track asset history and costs are the ones that can often benefit the most from a comprehensive maintenance plan and computerized data management system.
3. Adopt a Continuous Improvement Mindset.
The information you gather from asset maintenance software is a valuable planning tool for labor resources, capital expenditures, building safety and occupant comfort needs, energy management, and budgeting. Improving asset efficiency can lead to improved reliability and reduced energy consumption. Considering the surge in global demand for energy resources, organizations of all types and sizes must adopt a proactive and strategic approach to asset lifecycle management, constantly looking for ways to “do more with less.”
4. Using Maintenance Software for Better Asset Management.
You can’t manage what you don’t measure. To properly track, measure, and manage assets, you need computerized maintenance software and a trained and empowered maintenance team to use it. As a global provider of computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) and enterprise asset management (EAM) for 26 years, Eagle Technology offers a complete line of software for organizations of all types and sizes—from diverse manufacturing companies to airports, health care campuses, government and non-profit organizations to international multi-site corporations.
Our motto is, “Here to listen, here to help.” Our experienced sales team will guide you through the decision-making process to ensure that the software you select matches the needs and goals of your organization. Our world-class service and support department offers turnkey implementation and training, and technical support. Click here for a Proteus, MMX, and EquipSoft Comparison Chart or sign-up for our Free 90-day product demo. If your car has a maintenance management plan, can your organization afford not to? For more information, call Eagle today at 1-800-388-3268.
More from Our Blog
