The industry of maintenance management is changing thanks to computerized maintenance management software (CMMS). But before you make a decision on which CMMS is right for you, take a moment to evaluate the most important features and what you hope to accomplish by adding CMMS to your organization.
There are some important features that most maintenance managers are seeking when they turn to CMMS. Here’s a look at those features and how they can improve workflows, cut costs, and build efficiencies.
- Work order management
When you make work order requests simple, employees are more likely to make those requests so that your team hears about maintenance needs before there’s a larger issue. Effective work order management starts with a clean and easy-to-use portal that enables employees to make requests and flag urgent issues.
Then, a good work order management system makes it simple for technicians to take on work requests, document the maintenance they’ve conducted and move seamlessly to the next request to keep your operation running.
If used correctly, a work order portal enables you to respond quickly in the case of a breakdown and prioritize work to keep your facility productive. Plus you might find that your employees are more satisfied with your maintenance team and your maintenance team has better job satisfaction thanks to open lines of communication among them.
- Inventory management
Without the proper parts and materials in stock, it’s difficult for maintenance teams to do their jobs effectively. Real-time inventory management can ensure you order the parts that you need after you use what you had in stock. And, you’ll never find yourself facing too much inventory with storage issues or higher expenses than you need.
CMMS can connect with other vendors and auto-order parts once supplies reach a certain threshold or offer to reorder alerts for your management team to complete orders regularly. You can customize the features to meet your needs and match your inventory order schedule.
- Maintenance scheduling
Scheduling maintenance allows your team to be proactive instead of reactive and is a highly sought-after feature of CMMS. When you complete maintenance before a breakdown, it can mean your operation stays efficient and effective. You’ll lose less work time with that asset and avoid costly overtime with your maintenance technicians if you schedule the maintenance instead of it being unplanned.
Your maintenance team will like to know what they need to accomplish each workday and avoiding the more stressful situations of dealing with breakdowns. A CMMS can add scheduled maintenance to your work order management so that the technicians are assigned the preventative projects right alongside other work requests.
- Maintenance history
Seeing the full view of an asset’s history can give the maintenance management team insights into the life of the asset and help inform future preventative maintenance. And when a technician has maintenance history in front of them when completing a breakdown request, it can help them troubleshoot the issue quickly to get things back up and running.
History can inform preventative maintenance through reporting and then maintenance scheduling.
- Preventive and predictive maintenance
Preventive maintenance that uses predictive analysis is invaluable to manufacturing plants. You can see when minor tasks and asset maintenance go overlooked and get things back on schedule before they become a problem. Avoid unexpected breakdowns, work injuries and damage to your assets through predictive and preventative maintenance.
Plus, when you provide maintenance on assets before they breakdown, it costs less due to it being scheduled instead of unplanned.
Eagle CMMS offers all these important features and more to help you manage your manufacturing business. Contact us to schedule a demo to see our feature-rich, easy-to-use software platform that you can access from any device, anywhere.
