CMMS vs Excel/Acces for Maintenance Tracking

I work for a large manufacturing company, in our local plant we have 187 maintenance technicians and engineers. We have tried some rather sophisticated programs over the last 20 years and are now using mostly Excel. It is available on most desktops and laptops, All of our techs are trained to use it. It is extremely versatile, especially if you are good at writing visual basic programs. We use it for technical work instructions, training databases, PM instructions, PM databases, etc. I use Access for self-paced computer based training transcripts, test scores, & certifications. Powerpoint is excellent for animated training modules which show movement of gasses & fluids in complex hydraulic, pneumatic, and distribution systems. These are very powerful programs that are limited only by your imagination.

Excel/Access works great for us. I hope this helps you.

Richard

OOOOOh, CMMS. It's possible to find the SOTA* crap and still have major FUBARS. Previous post is right - keep to the lowest compatible tech and you'll cruise right through. Hell, I design CMMS using mostly Excell - you should be able to too. If not, I've got a brother in law...

*(State Of The Art)

That's what I wanted to hear, I just can't see spending all that time and money for systems that only half work. Naturally all the publications will tell you that the're wonderful.

Now about that brother in law. I'm not to up on visual basic, is there a good starting point, ie visual basic for dummies or is it a train yourself by using it?

Thanks for the input!

We use CMMS in hydropower for last six years it workks perfectely fine.No problem at all.May be other friends have bad experience with CMMS.I agree excel & access are powerfull.If you require please contact me for more details about the CMMS we use.

What program are you using and what is the size of your facility?

I ran the maint dept of a pharmaceutical plant, if it were not for all of the paper work that had to be kept, I would have scraped the CMMS we were using. We had a lot of equipment and a lot of PM that had to be documented, and the CMMS was pitiful. I was always wanting an extra field or a report that could not be generated. Most of the time I generated a report, printed to a file, imported that file into Excel, sorted and filtered, then printed and used the result as a custom report. I think the best solution would be to use Excel to generate your documentation system, and when you outgrow the capabilities of Excel, then consider hiring a programmer to write a custom CMMS program for you. By that time, you will easily be able to write the specs for the program.

we are using CMMS called MP2.You can browse its website for more details.

My Dear Friend...

I work on a Major automotive supplier, and CMMS is the base program around.. The problem is that it is so dense, and has so many things at once that I would say that the average user uses 15% of all the system capacity, not only because it is dense, but also complicated. And all new users takes up to one year to fully use these 15 % of capacity. So training is also very expensive.

As said in another reply, Excel / Access is the best deal, specially using macros made in Visual Basic (which is not complicated, and you can buy a small book for guidelines).

Hope this helps.

In my case, the CMMS programs (there were two in the past 12 years) that we've used were not fully utilized. They had a lot of features but were not all activated; were complex to use; and, evidently, developed by people who knew nothing about maintenance.

Sorry if this sounds like a general condemnation of all CMMS. There must be good ones out there but my company didn't buy them. Right now were using SAP's AMM and it's a pain to use. Furthermore, it's not easy or possible to change it to be easier to use since you don't own it.

Like the others say, Excel is easy to use, you can make your own applications AND TAILOR THEM TO YOUR NEEDS. That's the beauty of using Excel. There may be a CMMS out there that is also easy to use but, if it were up to me, I'd use good ol' Excel.

I'm going on a limb here but I may have come to a purchase. We found a very simple system that will track PM's and WO's plus has a scheduling module and meter tracking. All the basics for a rock bottom price of $1,000. It's called Mapcon Lite, anybody familiar with it? I'll report out if we make the purchase.

I'm doing research right now on the different CMMS programs available.

Mapcon Lite was one of the ones that I have looked at. Let me know how that works for you.

Hello friend,

I read you message , and would like to give you a small advice.

we are developing a very straight forward state of the art maintenance software for Maintenance Guys. that will solve your PM, WO, Product Details, warranty, Meter reading, Documentation right away, you will spend less time in data entry work and more time on maintenance and get the max ouput

with all your paper work in place.. let me know if you would be interested in having a look at the software, screen shots, It should be out by Feb Last week

send me your feedback .... rushi

I'm always interested, let me know when it's ready to demo.

to Facilities engineer

Surely i will keepyou informed on the release of the demo, please send me your email id so that i can keep you posted... await your reply

Rushi