How to Support an Asset Management Plan with CMMS
In an earlier post, we met Bill and John—two MPulse customers who discovered how their CMMS data could support long-term asset management planning. While Bill needed to make some adjustments to his approach, John made a proactive decision early on to set his CMMS up right—and it paid off. Of course, we’d all like to be in John’s shoes, so let’s talk about how he set up MPulse to support an asset management plan—and how you can too. If you recall, Keith Mobley, a member of the Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP), defines an asset management plan as a comprehensive strategic plan designed to help your organization get the maximum value from the assets it owns. Asset management isn’t just for your accounting folks though. It affects your maintenance team because their work impacts the uptime and total lifecycle cost of those assets. And that’s valuable information for your whole organization. Start Your Asset Management Plan with Data Tracking While supporting an asset management plan might sound complicated, in John’s case—and potentially yours—it actually boils down to making a few key decisions about your MPulse data. Here’s what John did: Use Your Asset Management Plan to Make an Informed Decision When the time came for management to decide whether to repair or replace a failed asset, John had the data right in MPulse Software to make an informed decision. With MPulse’s easy-to-use User-Definable Graphic Reporting, John quickly calculated the cost of maintenance by month/year, and he saw the overall cost trends for the asset were steady. With a little help from his accounting department on the estimated replacement cost and productivity improvements, John saw it was better to repair the sheet metal press than buy a new one—at least this time. After this experience, John decided to take the next step by linking his MPulse CMMS data to his organization’s asset register software with MPulse’s DataLink Integration Adapter. He’s seen the value of his MPulse CMMS data, and he wants to take it even further by supporting a company-wide asset management plan. Whether or not you’re a current MPulse customer, you can learn from John’s experience. Take a look at your CMMS data with an asset management mindset. You can create a wealth of asset information, helping your organization make more informed decisions, and potentially saving it a lot of money. Give us a call anytime if you’d like to learn more about how to get it done. We’re here to help.
CMMS Asset Management: Why Should I Care?
If your maintenance team supports a large organization, you may already have a formal CMMS asset management plan in place. If you’re in a small or medium-sized business, though, chances are you don’t have one. So why use asset management? While you’ve probably heard or read the term “asset management,” you might not be sure how it differs from the maintenance management you’re already doing. I mean, you are maintaining assets, right? Today I’d like to try and clear up some of the confusion—first by helping you understand what a CMMS asset management plan is, and second by explaining why it matters to you. Keith Mobley, a member of the Society for Maintenance and Reliability Professionals (SMRP), defines an asset management plan as a comprehensive strategic plan designed to help your organization get the maximum value from the assets it owns. Often, this is measured by financial professionals as Return on Net Assets (RoNA), and it’s roughly calculated as total productive output minus total asset cost during an asset’s lifecycle. And that’s all well and good for the folks in finance and accounting, but you’re probably thinking right now, “Why should I care?” You should care because setting up your CMMS with an asset management frame of mind is a great way to get the most out of it as a maintenance manager. If you’re thinking in terms of maximum uptime and total lifecycle cost, you’ll move beyond using your CMMS as a simple work order tracker and PM scheduler. Let me give you an example, a tale of two customers, Bill and John. Asset Management: Repair or Replace? Both Bill and John came to me on two separate occasions with the same question from their bosses: “Should we keep repairing that sheet metal stamping press, or should we buy a new one?” Bill called me in a panic. “The boss wants an answer today,” he said, “and I don’t know where to get it. We’ve been using MPulse for 8 years now. Can you help me figure this out?” “Calm down,” I said. “That should be easy to calculate.” We just needed to answer a few questions using the data in his MPulse database: What was the purchase price of the press? When did we acquire it? How much has it cost to maintain it, especially in the past year? How much downtime is the asset experiencing lately? By answering these questions, Bill could show how much the press was costing his company, currently, on an annual basis, as well as the average annual cost over the life of the asset. With a little help from the operations manager, we could also calculate the opportunity cost due to downtime. Comparing that to the estimated cost (and potential added productivity) of a new press would get us our answer. Unfortunately for Bill, that information wasn’t available. To “save time,” he hadn’t recorded the acquisition date and purchase price in MPulse. And, while he had recorded planned and unplanned maintenance, he hadn’t bothered to record parts costs. It pained me to tell him, “Bill, I’m afraid the best you’re going to be able to do is SWAG it.” Document Your Asset Data Thankfully, my experience with John had a better outcome. Like Bill, John had been using MPulse for many years. But John had taken the time to better document the assets he wanted to track—recording each one’s acquisition date and purchase price. John didn’t track every asset his company owns; instead, he focused on the important ones that he knew would take a significant investment to replace. Over the years, John tracked each asset’s planned and unplanned maintenance costs, just like Bill. But John also recorded parts costs by automatically linking the inventory used with assets, which allowed him to calculate how much money his stamping press had cost to maintain. With a quick phone call to his ops manager, John compiled a report in about 30 minutes that showed his boss the old stamping press was pretty cost effective—even though it needed more frequent repair. And John saved his company thousands of dollars. Bill and John were using the same MPulse Software, Inc, yet their outcomes were completely different. By taking just a few extra steps—and thinking about things with an asset management mindset—John created a wealth of asset information that allowed his company to make more informed decisions, eventually saving it a lot of money thanks to our asset management software. I know you’d rather be in John’s position than Bill’s. Keep an eye out for a future post, where I’ll explain how John set up MPulse to form the basis of an asset management plan—and how you can too.
What You Really Want from Your CMMS Solution
Ever wonder how much a maintenance repair really costs you? Or maybe if your machines have been lubed as often as they should? Maybe you find yourself asking, “When should I replace that compressor instead of repairing it again?” You might find that you’re often wondering if you’re doing everything possible to improve efficiencies, keep production lines running, or keep facilities in top-notch condition. If you’re a maintenance manager without a CMMS solution, you’ve probably got lots of unanswered questions. Likewise, as the CEO of a CMMS software company, I think a lot about whether MPulse Software is doing everything possible to meet the real requirements of our customers. We work hard to understand what maintenance teams want and try to provide the best CMMS solution. We gather valuable data on what CMMS customers are demanding these days, data that will help MPulse continue to improve the software and services we provide our customers. Here’s what I learned. Why You’re Purchasing a CMMS Solution Efficiency is the key. In fact, improved efficiency is exactly what most buyers of computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software are looking for. If I know what has happened in the past, I can make better decisions about what needs to be done in the future. This increase in efficiency comes from the use of technology to reduce manual tasks—in many cases, laborious paperwork. Let’s face it; maintenance work comes with its fair share of paper pushing that can take up more time than it should. CMMS software has become a powerful tool for maintenance teams to reduce those tedious tasks while at the same time providing key data for managers and executives to make better decisions. Yet Software Advice’s survey of potential CMMS buyers found 48 percent are still using manual methods to track their maintenance activity. Another 19 percent use nothing at all. Even though I know many maintenance teams don’t use a CMMS solution, it still perplexes me. The good news is these survey respondents are already thinking about making changes to improve their operations. I hope they can see the great strides we’ve made in CMMS technology, which should help relieve concerns about buying a new software system. But it’s clear we have some work to do. Improved CMMS software Implementation The good news is CMMS software has changed so much in the past few years that it’s never been easier to integrate it into an organization’s workflow. Plus, the user interface simply gets better and more intuitive, making training and implementation much faster. And if an organization foresees hurdles with implementation, CMMS vendors like MPulse Software now offer easily affordable services for implementation planning, data entry and migration, asset inventory, training, and much more. I found it interesting, and encouraging, that so many of the survey participants are from small maintenance operations—70 percent had teams of 10 people or fewer. I believe these organizations are exactly the ones that will benefit the most from the reduced costs of implementing CMMS. Now CMMS software isn’t just for the big operations—it’s more affordable and easier to integrate than ever before for small and medium-sized teams. Proactive vs. Reactive Maintenance There’s a larger trend indicated by Software Advice’s survey results—a fundamental shift among maintenance managers who see the importance of becoming a proactive organization rather than a reactive one. Instead of constantly putting out fires, modern maintenance operations can use CMMS to forecast, manage, and monitor maintenance activities. The goal is to keep assets running and unplanned maintenance to a minimum. Indeed, the survey showed preventive maintenance, work order, and asset management are required features across the board. It’s just a short hop to taking CMMS even farther, perhaps by capturing real-time data and working toward predictive maintenance, where teams can monitor the health of the equipment and foresee problems before they happen. I feel heartened by those findings, because it means the benefits of using a CMMS solution are becoming more and more understood across all industries. Get More for Your Money Wouldn’t it be nice if you had as clear a picture of your maintenance operation as this data has given me of your requirements? You can with CMMS software. CMMS data is a powerful tool that helps maintenance professionals plan proactively—making staff members more successful at their jobs and keeping the organization at the top of its game. If you haven’t considered it in a while, it’s probably time to look again. Prices have dropped. Functionality and usability have improved. You get a lot for your money in a CMMS package these days. After 20 years in this business, I still get excited when maintenance teams see how CMMS can help them save money, improve response times, and keep assets running longer and more efficiently. We have come so far since the days of paper and pencil. I’m eager to show more people how modern CMMS software can change their operations for the better. Want to see how CMMS software can help your maintenance operations? Get a free trial of MPulse, or contact us with questions.
Don’t Use CMMS! (for Payroll Time Tracking)
It happens with some regularity. I send an MPulse trainer onsite to help a new customer configure their CMMS software, and the trainer returns to report the customer wants the CMMS to do payroll time tracking. In some cases, they want to replace an existing timecard system. In others, they’re eager to use their new software as their first time tracking system. In almost all cases, it’s a bad idea. Here are three good reasons not to do it: 1. You won’t capture all their work hours on work orders. A typical rule of thumb is that only about 65% of available hours accrue to work orders. This “wrench time” is the heart of what your maintenance technicians do, but it’s not all they do. Whether it’s safety meetings, shop cleanup, snow removal, or other time spent on non-work order activity, it won’t be captured for payroll. 2. You’ll create unnecessary administrative headaches. Integration between systems is easier than ever; so getting data from your CMMS into the accounting department’s payroll system would be a snap. But do you really want to volunteer to be the person responsible for ensuring they have perfect payroll data? As the CMMS system owner/administrator, that’s what you’re doing if you use CMMS for payroll time tracking. Do yourself—and your hourly wage employees—a favor, and leave that to the bean counters and the systems they’re responsible for. 3. You won’t get good CMMS data. It’s important to remember why you bought a CMMS in the first place. You want to work more efficiently and understand the true cost of maintaining and repairing assets. While labor costs are a big part of that, they’re not all of it. Work orders in a CMMS capture critical information about a whole range of variables beyond labor hours: asset identity and location, repair parts consumed, type of work performed, skill sets employed, service and part vendors involved, and more. Skewed emphasis on using work orders for payroll time tracking can divert employee attention from accurately capturing other critical data. You won’t often hear me advising people not to use CMMS software. In this case, though, it’s good advice. If you need to track labor hours for payroll, a search for “time tracking software” or “payroll tracking systems” on Google and it will give you more options than you might have hoped for. But for getting to the heart of what really matters in your maintenance operation, there’s no substitute for a full-featured work order system, like MPulse.
What Data Needs to be Input into My CMMS?
“Focus on what you should do, not what you can do.” It is too easy to open your new software and start entering data. The reason it seems simple is you can enter data into fields; all it takes is a mouse and a keyboard The hard part is knowing what data should be entered into which field and how it should be entered. Implementing a CMMS is analogous to downloading the novel War and Peace and sitting down with our Nook, Kindle, or iPad for a good read. You power it up and find not War and Peace, but a Webster’s Dictionary! When you call the supplier, the service rep tells you the book you purchased has all the words that are contained in War and Peace—you just need to put them in the right order! Entering data into your CMMS is building your dictionary so the CMMS can later put the data into the right order, under a variety of queries, over and over again to provide you with the information you seek. If the words are not in the dictionary, they can’t be in the book! How do you know what data to enter? Where is the instruction book, the YouTube video, the Help system, the webinar, the website, or any of the other tools we use today to learn how to do things? Unfortunately there is no canned answer telling you what data should be include in your CMMS. If you got one, it wouldn’t mean anything to you anyhow. Here is the answer: Only enter data you want to come out of the CMMS later. Only you, and your organization, can determine what to enter in the CMMS. Stated another way, if you don’t want to see it on a print out, the screen, a report, a widget, or graph, don’t enter it. If you can clearly determine what you want out of your CMMS, you can determine what to put into it. Ask the stakeholders, all of them, what they want from the system. Have everyone mock up the reports they want to see or need. They should also indicate the frequency they want to see them, the filter fields and any sort criteria they’ll be using. Careful, it’s not that easy. When I ask this question of the people I work with the most commonly requested report is a “List of Overdue Work Orders.” So I offer them a list that looks like this: 21, 182, 145, 22659,EE-091, 6 They say, “What use is this?” I say, “You asked for a list of overdue work orders, here is the list.” So now comes the hard part; what differentiators do you want on this list? My guess is you want to see at least who is assigned to the work order, when it was due, why it is late, what is the priority, what piece of equipment (or other asset type) is contained on the work order. You may also want to see the work load on the listed employee. Maybe they are overloaded and everything is overdue. Say you say you want to know how much you spend on each piece of equipment. If I give you a spreadsheet with 500 rows, one for each piece of equipment, and two columns, one labeled Equip Number and the other labeled Total Cost of Maintenance, will this give you what you want? What if it has 5000 rows? Don’t you want to know what charges are included in the figure displayed in Total Cost of Maintenance? Do you want to be able to break this list down by any other attributes such as the equipments location, its department, its system or cell, its cost center, its type, or model? You might want to be able to drill down on each asset to the work order level and find out what kind, type, or projects are associated to each work order that built up the total cost. Remember, only put into your CMMS what you want to come out of your CMMS. This means turn off the computer, even though you can enter data. Now you should start a discussion with everyone from the top person in charge and the maintenance repair technician as well as the customers of the maintenance department and find out what they want to see from the CMMS. Then, you’ll know what source data you need to put in. Now that’s your answer.
What is (a) CMMS?
I was reading a discussion group dialog from an EAM/CMMS sub-group on LinkedIn today. The question of the day was, “What is your definition of a CMMS?” There were many responses and the question seemed to be drawing quite a few diverse comments. I thought I’d weigh in on the topic in my blog. Many of the respondents defined the acronym CMMS to represent “Computerized Maintenance Management System.” Others claimed the acronym represents “Computerized Maintenance Management Software.” As you can see, in either case, the acronym is still CMMS. I cannot argue as to which definition is correct. The acronym has been around for many years. Marketing slants, usage, and other claims tend to change the meaning and origin of acronyms over time. It is really not important which is correct. Some even imply these definitions mean one in the same. I disagree. These two definitions are not synonymous. Break it down. Use a simple if/then statement to show the folly in assuming that the two definitions are the same. “If Computerized Maintenance Management System = Computerized Maintenance Management Software then System = Software.” Most would agree this is definitely NOT a true statement. (And you thought you’d never use algebra!) Systems define process. Software supports process. Systems are dynamic, and software is static. Bad things happen when software is confused with system. Worse things happen when software defines process. I have seen too many organizations purchase a CMMS software package thinking it will fix, or define, their broken or non-existent maintenance management system. A company wouldn’t think of buying a set of tools to fix a broken compressor if they didn’t have a mechanic on staff with the knowledge and skills to use them. You don’t need the tools if you don’t have the knowledge and skills. In fact, purchasing tools and giving them to someone without the knowledge and skills to use them could cause someone to get hurt! CMMS software packages schedule, track, and report on how well a maintenance management system is performing. It is amazing how many companies buy software without defining what they want the software to schedule, track, and report on. A maintenance management system defines the goals and the processes used to attain those goals. A CMMS software package reports on the progress towards the goals, helps administer the process, and validates the attainment of the goals. Be sure you have the correct expectation for a CMMS software system.
10 Steps to a Successful CMMS Implementation
Avoid a rocky CMMS rollout with this checklist. CMMS has proven its ability to enhance business performance time and time again. However, the path to effective implementation is not always easy — complexities often arise as a result of trying to align an entire company behind the concept. You can find the success that comes from leveraging customer knowledge to the fullest measure by following these 10 steps: Calculate the value. Exactly how will CMMS benefit your business? Strive to answer this question in terms of measurable ROI (return on investment). Don’t focus too much on how the software will help customers — what will really improve your bottom line is how CMMS helps your employees use maintenance data more effectively. Work closely with key departments. Good planning is critical to your success. Use members of the production, planning, purchasing, operations and IT departments as parts of your CMMS planning team, because these departments can be affected to the greatest extent by a new solution. Let them tell you the business processes that need improvement. Then hammer out agreeable objectives mapped to new business processes. It’s often a good strategy to place some easy ones on top of the list so you can celebrate some victories early on. Budget realistically. Be a bit pessimistic when it comes to the budget to avoid the painful process of increasing cost estimates. CMMS customization and integration with existing software present two big expenses. It can cost two to three times the price of software for implementation and ongoing maintenance. Make sure you factor in all of these expenses from the early stages of your CMMS deployment. Organize maintenance data. The underlying maintenance data is the backbone of a CMMS solution. Most companies store duplicate and outdated data in multiple locations. Putting this data in a unified database, scrubbing it and making it available to the entire organization before implementation will make for a smooth rollout. If necessary, get help from vendors who offer data-cleansing services. Lead the project from the top down. Experts agree that the No. 1 reason implementations don’t work is that senior executives fail to lead. After all, if managers don’t work hard to ensure CMMS success, why should employees? It’s not just about signing paperwork and attending meetings. Executives must adopt CMMS as a corporate-level initiative, dedicate significant time and energy, motivate stakeholders and keep everyone on track. Find a reliable vendor and select functionality conservatively. Shop for a financially secure vendor with proven ability to expand the solution as your company grows. Beware of providers that rely heavily on partners for key functionality. When considering industry-specific software, make sure to find out if it really delivers on its promise. Talk to other corporate users in your field, try out the software and choose enough functionality to meet your business needs without sending your IT department on endless quests for the Holy Grail. Implement gradually. Change is never easy, especially for employees who may fear the accountability that comes with posting data that can expose their true performance. Start your CMMS initiative in a single department that stands to benefit the most in the short term; then follow with a zealous, company-wide CMMS proponent. When others witness the initial success of that department, bringing them on board will be much easier. Market CMMS to employees and deliver ongoing training. It may sound obvious, but it’s important to remember that employees have to use the solution in order for it to work. Clearly communicate how it will help them succeed, and start CMMS training early on. This way, you’ll chip away faster at the 18 to 24 months it typically takes employees to adopt new business processes. Actively manage the implementation. Technical difficulties, management turnover, employee resistance and adjustments in company direction will happen. Managers need to stay on their toes and quickly address changes to maintain momentum. Develop a culture of continuous improvement. CMMS solutions should be adjusted to deliver a sharper competitive edge as a company and its business evolve. Be sure to keep employees in the communication loop, and they will help supply the information needed to continuously improve the way the system leverages customer information. [related-content] Not all companies will achieve CMMS success because many fail to take into account the items listed above. Then again, for the ones who do succeed, the rewards are great. Stick to these steps, and you will rig the game in your favor. Content adapted from an original article on CRM implementation from Focus Research. The implementation of any data driven management information systems is very similar and adaptable across multiple system types.