Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS)

Computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software is used to manage maintenance operations on capital equipment. It helps maintenance personnel and departmental managers make better decisions for the allocation, maintenance, scheduling and disposal of equipment and properties.

CMMS systems usually include work order generation, event logs, scheduling of preventive maintenance checks and services, and downtime analysis. CMMS software also allows users to plan equipment maintenance activities to coincide with the schedules of employees such as technicians, mechanics, and operators.

Applications can be industry-specific, or designed for a range of industries such as transportation, energy and utilities, manufacturing, engineering, and automation.

GA Moose.

You can also incorporate hours of operation directly tied to the equipment if your system allows. This will flag and schedule any maintenance activities that you or the manufacturer advises and inform you when they are coming up. This is great especially if the equipment is not run on a regular basis. Saves time and money if run very little, but saves breakdowns if equipment is used extensively and for long hours.

As Moose says, the software can be very detailed and specific, or general. Many good software makers will usually give you demo software to check the ease of use and if it suits your needs.

I suppose you are asking the question about the utility of a software because you are already convince of the utility of the maintenance processes. Base on this, here is my answer with some ideas about benefits from a CMMS:

If you look for a good software (not gizmut downloaded for free on the WEB) you will have many benefits compare to doing your maintenance on paper. One of the easiest benefits to identify is definitively time saving. Time saving to search for equipment history (job done, cost, parts used, etc), time saving to look for parts required (parts used, parts catalogue), time saving to analyse the information (worst equipment, recurring troubles, MTBF, etc..) time saving to plan the jobs to do for the maintenance team ... and lot more. Our customers report up to 50% in time saving before using cmms... for example: they took 2 days per week to plan the jobs for next week now they take 1 day!!! ... the question is now what will they do with this time ?!

Complete WO approval and realisation process without paper. It saves time and money. And by making your process automated, it will delete the possibilities for "oops i forgot to approve this" "oops i lost your request" ... and so many others "oops".

When you use a good CMMS, you create a single point of access for all and every parts of information your maintenance team needs to make decisions and take actions in their day to day job: inventory information, part details, part requisition process, purchasing, inventory management, suppliers information, warranties, recalls, repairs, equipment history, equipment details (plan, picture, spec. sheet, etc) preventive preview, preventive and corrective WO planning, human resources management, tools management, key performance indicators, etc…

In fact, if you already have a maintenance team in place, with a preventive program and a corrective task management process, having a CMMS it's about going "forward" in your maintenance program. It's about doing more with less ... or if your lucky just doing more (period). It's about giving better tool to your maintenance team so they can take more time "on the floor" instead of "searching" for information. It's about giving your maintenance team the tool to improve what you are already doing to deliver better equipment availability and fewer breakdowns.

And you know, whether it is discrete or process manufacturing, it is not really different. The objective is the same: better equipment availability and fewer breakdown risks for the best possible cost.

I hope it will help to make an idea about CMMS.