Top Three Ways Property Management Companies Can Keep Costs Down
Guest blog from Premiere Works Property and facility managers know profit margins are tight. It’s important to keep your fees competitive, however, you also need to keep your business financially viable. Controlling your costs helps strengthen your budget. Consider how these three areas could help you streamline your operations to make them more profitable and productive. Invest in Energy Efficiency Energy efficiency can help your profitability, and it can also appeal to potential renters who appreciate your efforts to be “green.” The two main categories of energy efficiency are passive and active efficiency. You can improve passive efficiency by purchasing energy-efficient appliances and implementing low-flow toilets and showers. While these items may cost more upfront, the energy savings can be substantial over time. Active efficiency means using less water and power during maintenance procedures and choosing reusable products instead of disposable. These methods may include changing HVAC filters, cleaning the condenser more frequently, and landscaping with plants that do not require frequent watering. Implement CMMS Software Computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software organizes all of your property or facility maintenance work orders and service requests. CMMS software provides scheduling, tracking, and reporting tools, so you can improve your organization’s efficiency and productivity. For property or facility managers, CMMS software also enables tenants to request maintenance service electronically, and the system will automate communication between your maintenance team and your service requestors. Implementing CMMS software helps you stay on top of scheduled tasks, plus tenants will feel more confident in your ability to address issues. Establish a Preventive Maintenance Program While implementing a CMMS is the best way to organize maintenance needs, an even better way to save money is to take care of maintenance tasks before they become a problem. CMMS software helps managers establish a preventive maintenance (PM) program, so you can schedule of maintenance tasks and prepare your managed properties for the months ahead. These tasks might include maintaining HVAC systems, scheduling vendor visits, cleaning the gutters in autumn, installing storm windows before the rainy season, and cleaning the roof. By controlling your costs, it’s easier to keep your fees competitive and provide the management services that your customers want and need. Take the time now to plan ahead. You can make your job easier—and more profitable. Steve Fountaine is the Owner of Premiere Works, general contractors providing commercial property management in Maryland, Northern Virginia, and Washington D.C. Premiere Works’ other services include commercial painting, construction, contracting, build outs, office renovations, and more.
How HVAC Maintenance Can Save Money and Energy
Guest blog from the BP Group One of a facility manager’s most important assets is the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems that regulate temperatures and maintain air quality for comfort, safety, and healthy working environments. If you aren’t proactively maintaining your HVAC system, you’re likely wasting both money and energy that can be put to better use. Regular maintenance ensures your HVAC system is running efficiently. Typically, the maintenance technician will… clean the filters clean the ducts clean the coils lubricate moving pieces calibrate thermostat settings inspect pipes and drains check electrical connections perform other tasks as outlined by the manufacturer. With CMMS software, facility managers can easily keep track of everything that needs to be done—scheduling maintenance jobs, recording maintenance history, prioritizing tasks, and more. What’s at Risk if You Don’t Schedule Regular Maintenance Checkups? If you choose to ignore HVAC system maintenance, you’ll end up purchasing a new one sooner rather than later. An HVAC system usually has a lifespan of 15‒20 years, but if it’s not cared for properly, it could fail sooner. Scheduling regular maintenance checkups will prolong the life of your HVAC system and save you money. If there is a business inside the building—such as a movie theatre or hotel—sales also are at risk. When an HVAC system starts to fail, the building’s temperature will likely be too cold or too hot. If customers aren’t comfortable inside the building, they may choose not to return. Depending on location, HVAC maintenance also should include winterizing. For example, failure to insulate HVAC pipes properly can result in frozen pipes and leaks, another costly repair. How Does HVAC Maintenance Save Energy? According to FacilitiesNet, HVAC maintenance results in 15‒20 percent savings in energy. Below are some ways regular maintenance helps save energy. Regular maintenance allows the HVAC system to run smoother, so the moving parts need less energy to keep it going. Maintenance for outside air dampers, which let in outside air for cooling, ensures the dampers are not allowing more air in than needed, thereby using more energy to condition that extra air. Replacing an old system with an energy-efficient system, such as one with an ENERGY STAR rating, will use less energy over time. Facility managers shouldn’t wait for HVACs to fail; they should be taking preventative measures to avoid problems. Guest-blogger Bio: The BP Group is a leader in the HVAC Maintenance, HVAC Mechanical, Service and Building Technology Industry located in Glendale, NY.
Downtime Calculator: How Much Does Equipment Downtime Really Cost You?
Yesterday was tough. My computer crashed, the copier broke, and our coffee machine went on strike while I was rushing to meet a deadline. I called our IT tech, the copier repairperson, and the local coffee shop to fix the problems (not necessarily in that order), and then my blood pressure spiked when I figured out how late I’d have to stay to get everything done. Maintenance managers know exactly what I’m talking about. The maintenance team is on the frontline when things aren’t working, and we spend lots of time talking to management about the cost of downtime in manufacturing. But do we spend the time to really understand what it is, or how it’s measured? According to Wikipedia, “The term downtime is used to refer to periods when a system is unavailable. Downtime or outage duration refers to a period of time that a system fails to provide or perform its primary function.” That definition covers the basics, but in the real world just about every organization defines and measures equipment downtime a little differently. Here at MPulse, we’ve learned to dig a little deeper when our customers start asking questions about metrics like mean time between failures (MTBF), mean time to repair (MTTR), or total downtime. We don’t just assume we know what they want—it’s our job to understand what they’re really looking for and show them how their MPulse Software, Inc can help them measure it on their own terms. Everyone needs a starting point to understanding downtime, and we thought this production downtime calculator recently published by Software Advice* was a pretty good one. (Click here for instructions.) Play around with it and ask yourself these questions: Does this production downtime calculator make sense for my operation? Is it missing anything? Do I know where to find the information it’s asking for? Do the results make sense? How could I improve upon the calculator to better understand the cost of downtime in manufacturing? Knowing how much equipment downtime costs your organization is just the beginning. Reducing equipment downtime—and the related loss of productivity—is one of the biggest benefits our CMMS users find with their MPulse Software, Inc. It all comes back to the basics: when your organization’s equipment hasn’t been maintained properly, you’re going to experience more downtime. That translates into lost dollars and intense pressure on the maintenance team to get production running again. The less downtime you experience in the first place, the better. The shorter duration of that downtime when it does happen, the better. I was lucky yesterday. I lost two hours of my time, plus $4.50 for an extra-large coffee. You can bet I’m gonna do a few things differently to prevent a day like that from coming around again soon. Proactive maintenance managers are doing the same thing. If you need help getting started, contact us to learn more about our equipment maintenance software. Calculator Instructions (courtesy of Software Advice): This simple tool allows maintenance managers to plug in estimates about their operations and generate an average cost of machine downtime per hour. Alternatively, manufacturing companies can enter information to find their estimated amount of revenue loss per hour of downtime. Simply click on the zeros on the right side of the tool to enter in your company’s information. (You can also download a version by clicking the download button on the black bar below the tool.) Employee costs per hour: The average employee salary divided by number of hours worked, multiplied by the number of employees. Average revenue per hour: An estimate of how much revenue your company generates in a given hour. Employees affected by downtime: An estimate of the percent of employees who would be unable to work due to shut down machinery. Revenue affected by downtime: An estimate of the percent of revenue lost due to machine downtime. Number of units produced per hour: An estimate of the number of units produced in one hour. Average profit per unit: The amount of profit earned for each unit produced. Number of hours of downtime: The number of hours of downtime expected. * Equipment Downtime Calculator provided by Software Advice. Visit MPulse’s company profile on Software Advice.
Are You Really Doing Predictive Maintenance?
Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about a recent phone call I had with an MPulse Software user, a customer and friend for many years. “Steve,” Jim said. “My new boss says our shop needs to start doing predictive maintenance. I’ve been working this gig for many years, and I think we’re not talking about the same thing when he says ‘predictive maintenance.’ What do you think?” I totally understand where Jim is coming from. As a maintenance veteran, I’ve noticed some confusion about the term “predictive maintenance.” It turns out “predictive” means different things to different people. I’ve heard a lot of customers say “predictive maintenance,” when they really mean preventive or condition-based maintenance. It’s my job to understand our customers’ real goals, and then help them understand how MPulse Software, Inc can help them get there. So, let’s review the types of predictive maintenance plans and what they mean. Run-to-Failure (RTF) Maintenance is running an asset to failure. A simple example would be replacing a burned-out light bulb. An important goal of CMMS usage is to reduce run-to-failure maintenance in favor of a more proactive maintenance plan. Even if your assets have been maintained based on failure in the past, you can easily begin to use CMMS to collect important data that will help you predict future failures. Preventive Maintenance (PM) is triggered by time, meter, or event. This type of maintenance is common in most maintenance departments. Everyone understands it in terms of auto maintenance: changing your oil every 3,000 miles or every 3 months. (Which is far too often in today’s cars, by the way.) CMMS excels at helping maintenance shops schedule preventive maintenance tasks, preventing failure and prolonging asset life cycles. Condition-Based Maintenance (CBM) allows you to track meters and gauges on assets, and to trigger work orders when certain numbers are hit. When an asset’s condition changes outside of a specified range, maintenance events are triggered in your CMMS. While the actual data can be gathered manually or automatically, you’ll need a CMMS to store the data and to alert maintenance staff when it’s time to take action. Because CBM monitors an asset’s real-time condition, there’s a predictive element to it. But true predictive maintenance is slightly different. Predictive Maintenance (PdM) is the scientific analysis of how long an asset will last using one or many types of measurement. A classic example of PdM maintenance is electrical transmission grids, where engineers are charged with analyzing detailed information about equipment failure rates, so they can program software to predict when similar assets will fail in the future. CMMS plays a role in PdM maintenance too. MPulse Software, Inc can capture, store, and organize data that can be produced into reports and fed into predictive analytical tools. It turned out that Jim’s boss really was talking about condition-based maintenance. He wanted to integrate sensors on key assets and use the power of the Internet of Things (IoT) to collect the data to feed into their MPulse CMMS software. I understand his confusion because CMMS combined with IoT is an excellent way to help maintenance teams to foresee asset failure and proactively perform maintenance. It’s not truly predictive maintenance, but it’s much more proactive that run-to-failure or preventive maintenance. Whether you’re really doing predictive maintenance or not, you’ve got have CMMS software to keep up with the large and growing number of data points in today’s industrial or facilities environment. If you need help getting started, contact us to learn more.
How Can I Promote the Maintenance Profession to Attract Talented Employees?
In my last post, I discussed ways to find good employees for your maintenance positions. In this post, I’ll identify some bigger issues that contribute to the current employment climate, and how maintenance managers can make a difference for everyone in the field. Manpower Group recently surveyed more than 1,000 U.S. employers, and found respondents had difficulty filling open positions for skilled trades positions because candidates lack technical competencies/hard skills (48 percent); candidates lack workplace competencies/soft skills (33 percent); and because of a lack of/no available candidates (32 percent). Those numbers aren’t likely to surprise any maintenance manager. But what can we do about it? I believe maintainers are often our own worst enemy because we do not promote our profession. In this blog I’ll identify some of the problems and offer some suggestions for change. Problem #1: Poor Public Image Let’s face it—the public perception of maintenance personnel is poor. Maintenance technicians are the guys with the dangling tool belt and pocket ruler. Becoming a maintenance technician is not a job classification a young person aspires to. If they did, they wouldn’t admit it. Most people are simply looking for a job when they enter the maintenance field. They stumble upon our profession accidentally. Solution #1: Promote Your Team Raise the level of awareness of your maintenance program. Look for opportunities to share your projects, goals, accomplishments, and results. Don’t be afraid to self-promote wherever you can, from the local media to national trade press. (Because— trust me—the marketing department doesn’t even know where your office is!) Problem #2: Unclear Career Path The maintenance career path typically goes from custodian to technician to engineer to lead to foreman to manager to director to VP. That’s eight steps. But there’s no industry recognition of these steps or consistent requirements for moving from one to the next. That makes maintenance work a tough sell for young people who are looking for profession with a well-defined career path. Solution #2: Invest in Professional Development It’s time to define the maintenance career path ourselves. Join or start a chapter of a professional association (like the Association for Maintenance Professionals or the International Facility Management Association) in your area. Find out what’s going on at other plants or facilities. Get your staff involved in service clubs and organizations. Encourage your team members to give back to their communities. These outreach activities are great ways to promote what maintenance technicians do and how much people rely on them. Problem #3: Lack of Educational Requirements I mentioned how low pay is problem for recruiting new employees in my last post. One cause of low pay is the lack of educational requirements for entry or promotion within the maintenance field. We may call ourselves maintenance engineers, but very few have the credentials to back it up. Most of us learned on the job. Solution #3: Get Involved Get involved with your local education institutions. Advocate for trades and industry education. Find out what is happening in both secondary and post-secondary education related to our profession. Participate in work study and intern programs. Remember the only thing harder to do than find a good employee is to replace a good employee. Invest in the maintenance community, and we’ll all benefit!
How Can I Find Good Employees for My Maintenance Team?
Last week I was talking with a long-time MPulse customer about his top priorities as a maintenance manager at a large production facility. “Brad,” I asked, “what’s your biggest challenge in the next 12 months?” Brad didn’t mention common problems like technology issues or budget constraints. Instead, he said, “Two of my most experienced team members are retiring, and I need to find someone who can fill their shoes.” Brad knows that finding good people for maintenance jobs isn’t easy. And he’s not alone. [related-content] In the past, maintenance technicians were promoted from custodial or laborer positions and given on-the-job training in specific tasks. Today, though, it’s tough to find the right people with skills we need in the maintenance department. According to the Manpower Group’s latest Talent Shortage Survey, skilled trades positions are the most difficult to fill, and have ranked #1 for the past four years. So how can a maintenance manager like Brad find good people for his maintenance team? In this blog, I’ll identify some of the problems and offer some suggestions for overcoming them. Problem #1: Aging Workforce The average age of a maintenance worker is 50 years. Our work processes, requirements, and perceived value are seriously out of date for the Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook age. And many “old school” industrial employers are wary of mobile technology. So if we’re lucky enough to hire young people, we ask them to leave their tablets in their lockers and we restrict their cell phone use. Solution #1: Make Maintenance Work Attractive to Younger People Maintenance managers need to go out of their way to hire younger employees. Start by embracing technology, especially mobile devices. Empower your younger staff members by asking for their suggestions on better ways to integrate technology in your maintenance workflows. Eliminate paper. Promote the technical side of maintenance work. These things are important to younger workers, and they’ll make your positions more appealing. Problem #2: Low Pay Often, maintenance work is undervalued. As a result, the pay scale for maintenance personnel is typically lower than similar positions in production. Do you want to understand the real value of your maintenance personnel? Just ask yourself what they’re worth when a breakdown has your production line at a stand still. Solution #2: Promote Your Department’s Value Make sure the people in positions of power understand what your maintenance program does and the value you bring to the organization. Share your projects, goals, accomplishments, and results for both the department and for your team members. If you show your maintenance team’s impact on the bottom line, it’s easier to get approval for pay increases. Problem #3: Lack of Training Though the options for maintenance training are growing, few traditional educational tracks exist to prepare people for the maintenance world. Most maintainers pick up isolated skills from community colleges, trade schools, and on-the-job training. These skills include welding, metal working, carpentry, machining, mechanics, hydraulics, and more. Solution #3: Develop an Internal Training Program Create a professional growth/training program for your maintenance staff. Professional growth programs are a great recruiting tool. Work with management to provide compensation for tuition, books, and fees. Reward strong work performance with additional opportunities for education. These ideas are a good start, but I’m the first to admit change needs to happen on a broader scale. In my next blog, I’ll discuss how maintenance managers like Brad can tackle the bigger issues in our field.
The Pipework Maintenance Checklist (Guest Blog)
Thanks to our guest blogger, Amanda Hill from Commercial Industrial Supply, for this terrific article on planning for pipework maintenance. Combine her no-nonsense checklist with your CMMS maintenance system to maximize results. What’s On Your Pipework Maintenance Checklist? Every plant manager faces maintenance challenges, which is why we wrote this article to help highlight the most important plant manager responsibilities, particularly when it comes to plumbing and piping. However, you can minimize those challenges by adding a thorough preventive maintenance plan to your plant manager responsibilities. Routine inspections help your pipework maintenance team spot potential problems before they cause a slow-down or become a hazard. Use the following as a guide to help you in your plant manager responsibilities and come up with a pipework maintenance checklist that will keep your facility running smoothly. What Needs to be Checked Each Shift? To prevent slow-downs or work stoppages, your pipework maintenance engineers should make a round of your facility at the beginning of each shift. Industrial machinery is normally under a lot of stress, which makes small malfunctions quite common. Catching them early prevents larger disasters down the road. In addition to these plant manager responsibilities, make sure your pipework maintenance engineers check all pipes hooked up to vibrating machinery each day—particularly rigid piping like steel and copper. Threaded pipe, flanged fittings, bolts, brackets, and clamps can easily work loose. By tightening the connections before that happens, you can make sure that work doesn’t grind to a halt, and you’ll also prevent chemical spills and other safety hazards. Try a Free Demo Items for Your Daily Checklist Certain valves in your facility should be inspected on a daily basis. Flow control valves, since they are typically under pressure, are more prone to leaking than other types of valves. Make sure someone from your maintenance crew visually inspects the valve (particularly the gland nut) for leaks each day. Steam traps are another kind of high-pressure valve that can sometimes fail. Traps are generally bolted to flanged pipe, with the void between the pipe flange and the trap flange sealed by a gasket. Your engineers need to check the flanges for loose bolts and inspect the gasket to make sure it’s providing a tight seal. What Should be Checked Weekly? Unlike flow control valves, stop valves and isolation valves tend to be either open or closed most of the time. Since they are under less stress and see less wear, you can check these valves weekly. The most common failure point is the valve gland around the valve stem. When the valve gland wears out, you’ll find leaks around the valve stem or gland nut. Safety valves, pressure release valves, and pressure reducing valves don’t fail often, but they are essential for safety, which means they also need to be on your weekly maintenance checklist. Make a visual inspection, and if possible, perform safety tests to ensure that they are functioning properly. Quarterly Piping Checklist Your quarterly routine is the most extensive part of your plant manager responsibilities and your maintenance checklist. Have your pipework maintenance crew do all of the following: Check all threaded fittings and unions for leaks. Turn valves to make sure they aren’t seized or broken. Do a plant-wide inspection of clamps, brackets, flanges, and other fittings. Inspect all indoor piping—overhead, trenched piping, and piping in tunnels or crawlspaces. Loose or leaky fittings and malfunctioning valves will make themselves obvious during this inspection. What aren’t as obvious are the problems that may be developing in your pipework. The inspection should include pressure checks to make sure there aren’t buildups developing inside the piping, and you’ll also need to perform a visual inspection of the exterior of the piping. If there is steel, copper, or other metal piping in your facility, look for signs of rust and corrosion and make plans to repair or replace sections before a leak develops. What You’ll Need to Check Biannually Outdoor piping is typically stronger than indoor piping, but that doesn’t mean it should be ignored. Every six months, one of your plant manager responsibilities should be to follow the same routine as with indoor piping: Check exposed valves, connections, and pipes while looking for signs of wear, rust, and corrosion. As with indoor pipework maintenance, replace anything that is malfunctioning or is likely to fail sooner rather than later. Maintenance Checks Over the Long Haul All of the short-term checks are helpful, but there is one key area that is often overlooked: buried piping. If piping is under a concrete slab, it may not be worth the time, effort and money to excavate it without good cause. However, piping that is easier to excavate needs to be checked once every five years. Of course, the five-year rule isn’t a hard-and-fast rule, but depending on what kinds of buried pipes your facility has, you may want to adhere to it closely. For instance, clay and iron drainage lines have a life span of approximately 50 to 60 years before they start to rust, crack, or shift. If you have pipes approaching this age, you can prevent many problems with some exploratory excavation. Even buried steel, copper, and plastic lines can suffer damage, so it’s wise to check them as often as your maintenance budget allows. To most plant managers, it doesn’t make sense to replace buried lines that aren’t leaking or broken—the cost just isn’t worth the benefit. However, there are cost-effective replacement options available. For instance, Class 125 PVC is inexpensive, and it works well for drains, vents, and other applications that don’t require much pressure. Rather than ignoring a potential underground problem, this kind of piping offers you an inexpensive way to prevent a disaster. Every facility is different, with unique plant manager responsibilities and pipework maintenance checklists. As you create a guide for your maintenance team to follow, don’t skip the pipework! If unnoticed or left untended, even a minor piping problem can turn into lost work hours, line shutdowns, or occupational hazards.
The Future of Maintenance Management: Data-Driven Management
It hasn’t been too long since most maintenance teams were primarily reactive organizations. The bulk of their day was spent answering phone calls and performing unplanned repairs. Making decisions on the fly meant sometimes prioritizing those repairs based on who was screaming the loudest. Today, though, things are rapidly changing in the maintenance office. Smart, proactive maintenance managers are taking advantage of modern technologies to forecast, manage, and monitor maintenance activities. And they’re using preventive and predictive maintenance tools and strategies to keep assets running and unplanned maintenance to a minimum. Their phones still ring, but it’s not just incoming repair requests anymore. Often those calls are from senior managers, CFOs, COOs, and even CEOs who want detailed, accurate information from the maintenance department on what’s impacting productivity, profitability, and corporate progress. What’s changed? It’s called data-driven management, and it’s a trend that’s here to stay. What is Data-Driven Management? “What gets measured gets done.” Data-driven management simply means making management decisions backed by reliable data. Technological advances continue to make more and more detailed, relevant data available. And with that increased capability comes increased opportunity to improve organizational performance at all levels, and in all departments. Expectations, too, are rising. Managers from the front lines to the corporate headquarters have ever-growing expectations that the data they ask their employees for will be accurate, reliable, and readily available. It’s no different for managers in the maintenance world. They should expect more from their employees and systems. They also should be ready to answer more and tougher questions from above. What Does This Mean for Maintenance Managers? As a maintenance manager eager to stay ahead of the curve and adopt a more data-driven approach, you’ll need to rely more and more on your computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software. You’ll need to be sure your CMMS is set up to answer the questions that matter to you—and to your boss. It’s the best tool you have for gathering, analyzing, and reporting data about your equipment and your team. And by using that data, you can make decisions based on hard evidence, instead of perceptions or assumptions. What Do We Have to Gain? The power of CMMS data lies in the questions you can now answer, both for your department and your organization as a whole. Is it more cost effective to repair that forklift or replace it? Should you hire another staff member to reduce overtime costs? What are our biggest repair parts expenditures? Best of all, the cumulative nature of CMMS data means you can ask different questions in the future—ones you might not even think about today. Furthermore, data-driven management allows maintenance teams to communicate their value and contributions to the organization as a whole. It’s easy for upper management and other departments to see the value and efficiency of your team and their work when they can see the data—and the dollars—right in front of their eyes. You can use CMMS data to tell the story of your maintenance team’s contributions to the organization. Together, CMMS software and data-driven management give you the picture you need to accurately assess how your department is functioning and where you might make changes to improve. With good data to work from, your organization can make good decisions. And that will improve its ability to compete effectively and efficiently. Contact us!
The Future of Maintenance Management: Enter the “Digital Native”
A new breed of employees is beginning to enter the workforce, the “digital native” generation. Digital natives, with their inherent proficiency in technology, are transforming maintenance management by streamlining processes and optimizing efficiency through digital tools and platforms. And they’re no longer just joining Silicon Valley startups; they’re coming to a maintenance team near you. Having grown up surrounded by screens and fed by seemingly endless access to information, digital natives have a whole new relationship to technology—and they might just be your new best friends. Older employees can capitalize on the opportunities these younger “resources” present. It’s important to recognize their contributions to the workplace—skills that compliment and expand the maintenance team’s capabilities in a modern organization. What makes these digital natives different? How will they change the way maintenance gets done? And how can you put their skills to use to get better results from your maintenance management program? Comfort Level with Technology Because digital natives have spent their entire lives surrounded by everything from computers and videogames to MP3 players and cell phones, these employees have a greater understanding of technology and its capabilities. Their devices are a key part of their personal lives, and this translates to their professional lives as well. As such, these workers will not only embrace new technology in the workplace, but they will also expect it. While much of the resistance to new technology common in older generations is nonexistent with these team members, it is replaced by expectations that the company will keep its technology up to date in order for these workers to do their jobs. Communication and Collaboration with Digital Natives While older generations may pick up the phone or schedule an in-person meeting, younger workers may prefer virtual problem solving. From texting to videoconferencing to social networking, digital natives are familiar with and prefer other ways to communicate and collaborate. This preference affects everything from daily tasks to performance reviews. For example, younger workers have grown up with constant feedback, and they may need regular communication from their coworkers and bosses. They also might conduct research differently—eschewing the traditional phone book for a quick Google search, for example. Digital Native Scheduling and Multitasking Early technology adoption among younger generations has enabled them to develop skills in multitasking. They are used to surfing the Web while they talk on a cellphone and watch a program on television. This tendency affects their desire for variety in the workplace, and they may not like to stay too long on any one assignment. Younger generations also prefer flexibility in their work schedules. So they may be more open to working outside of the typical 8-5 workday in exchange for time off to pursue leisure activities. This flexibility can work in your favor, if you are willing to be creative in scheduling work during your equipment and assets’ downtime. As a maintenance management leader, you have a unique position to harness the possibilities that digital natives can bring to your organization. By investing in these new employees, you can bring new methods and ideas to your workplace. Leverage the technological experience and expectations of this new generation of workers to improve your team’s processes, efficiency, and motivation. It can be a win-win situation for your organization and your employees. Have questions? Contact us!
The Future of Maintenance Management: Technology Adoption
The adoption of technology in maintenance management is revolutionizing the industry by enhancing operational efficiency, reducing downtime, and improving asset reliability through the use of advanced digital solutions. Despite the fact that maintenance management can be highly technical in nature, maintenance teams are often the last in an organization to get new information technology (IT) systems. Whether it’s better management software, mobile devices, networking improvements, or just better desktop computers, other departments are sure to get them before the maintenance teams do. The maintenance department’s typical workday includes highly technical and specialized tasks related to a broad range of advanced technologies. Until recently, though, information technology wasn’t considered relevant for maintainers. But the truth is information technology is just as important as any other tool in the maintenance team’s toolbox. The same IT systems that make other departments like finance and marketing more effective are also important for maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) professionals. Even today, as technology is rapidly integrated elsewhere in organizations, many maintenance departments are just now implementing PCs and related technology, like computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software. And often other forces hamper this process, like when the maintenance folks get hand-me-down computers after other departments get new ones. Or when employees are forced to deal with limited, or nonexistent, network and Internet connections. Yet technology is such a powerful advantage for the maintenance team. So what can you do to ensure your company’s maintenance team gets the tools it needs? You can start by consciously eradicating these three myths in your own mind, then educating others in your organization. Three Technology Adoption Myths 1. Maintenance People Aren’t Smart Enough Most maintenance employees are highly technical; the first to be called to fix machines and systems that stump everyone else. So why are they perceived as incapable of using PCs and smartphones? Indeed, there may have been a time when maintenance people, gifted as they were in mechanical operation, didn’t need a computer to help them with their job. But that time has long gone. If your team maintains fleet vehicles, they are working with computers integrated into all aspects of the vehicles—including the engines, transmissions, air bag systems, and fuel systems. On the shop floor, equipment that once was manually controlled is now automated with process control systems. Far from being not smart enough, the maintenance team usually comprises some of the most tech-savvy folks in the operation. 2. Technology is too complicated This myth may have begun within the maintenance team itself. And it’s true that at one point in time, integrating technology was a complicated process. But improved user interfaces have made it faster and easier for maintenance teams to get up and running with computers and other IT systems. For example, gone are the days when you needed high-powered PCs and a complicated internal network to support CMMS software. Today it can be done with a tablet device and a WiFi connection. It’s getting simpler all the time. 3. Computers are for Bean Counters Technology adoption among organizations often filters down from the top. Usually the top includes more than a few “bean counters.” Yet a computer isn’t just for running numbers and analyzing company stock performance. CMMS software can serve as the central hub of your maintenance team, holding a vast amount of real-time data that can tell you what’s really going on out there at any given moment. This information helps your team focus on their workload in a productive way. And when your maintenance team is more productive, your whole organization benefits, including the bean counters. When something breaks, you can be sure maintenance is the first number people will call. So it’s important to make sure your team members aren’t the last on the IT department’s list when it comes to purchasing software, computers, and mobile devices to help them manage their own workflow. Technology adoption in the maintenance management field is growing because the expectations managers have of maintenance personnel are growing too. Today’s maintenance team is expected to plan for preventive maintenance tasks and optimize asset life cycles. Letting go of old myths and advocating for your team’s IT needs leads to good maintenance management and good financial management—two things that benefit your whole organization. Have questions about technology adoption in maintenance? Contact us.