Checklists can be a great tool to standardize routine tasks that have to be run on a recurring basis. In the same fashion, a preventive maintenance checklist can be used to streamline a variety of preventive maintenance tasks.
However, preventive maintenance checklists are only useful if they are created with a purpose and include all of the necessary information.
Even though some top managers would be very excited to see this, autonomous maintenance is not a new maintenance strategy where robots drive around and instantly diagnose and perform needed maintenance work.
Quite the contrary, autonomous maintenance expands equipment maintenance responsibilities to machine operators and often requires a significant change in the organization’s mindset for successful implementation.
Different companies have different needs, but core CMMS features tend to be used across the board. That’s not surprising when you consider how those features interconnect.
If you want to run a proactive maintenance plan, you need to have the ability to schedule PMs and start Work Orders, you have to be able to assign specific technicians to specific assets, and you need to have dashboards and reports that enable you to track work in progress. If one of those features is missing, the whole thing falls apart.
Every company is trying to do more with less. This is especially true for the maintenance department. If you are a maintenance professional, you know exactly what I am talking about. Management doesn’t want to spend money on anything that doesn’t directly affect the bottom line.
This provides a problem for a maintenance professional who intuitively sees the value of a good CMMS, but doesn’t know how to get his management to approve a new software purchase. However, there is a simple solution — show your management how much money a CMMS is going to save the company by calculating CMMS ROI (Return on investment).
When you run any type of department, how do you know if you’re doing a good job?
In the maintenance world, the answer to that question is maintenance KPI (Key Performance Indicator) and maintenance performance metrics.
One might think that spending is a crucial thing to look at as top managers seem to only be interested in how much they need to spend on their maintenance departments. However, doing a unilateral analysis based on cost alone doesn’t give you any usable information on the performance of your maintenance team. For that, you need to go much deeper.
“Every $1 in deferred maintenance costs $4 of capital renewal needs in the future.”
Contrary to your initial gut reaction, deferred maintenance is a practice with a very useful purpose.
Maintenance managers often work with limited resources (be it budget, time or staff). This means that there are many situations where some maintenance work has to be postponed and put onto maintenance backlog until you resolve higher priority issues.
Most firms find it difficult to maintain effective spare parts management since there is a fear that stocking spares may not be in line with effectively controlling operating costs. As plant managers, various expectations to recognize ways to perform efficient spare parts management becomes important.
A marketing team needs a marketing manager. A retail store needs a store manager. A maintenance department needs a maintenance manager.
Whenever you have a team of people that needs to be coordinated, someone has to be in charge to delegate and oversee all of the activities. What makes the position of a maintenance manager a bit different is that the scope of their responsibilities is somewhat larger than with your standard managerial role.
If you had to guess 3 things people carry around at all times, what would it be? I bet you would say a wallet, keys, and a smartphone.
The fact that mobile devices have become, well, so mobile, is the reason why even the industrial sector is looking to take advantage of this powerful piece of machinery everyone has in their pocket.
Anyone who is serious about equipment maintenance is constantly on the lookout on how to improve it.
While predictive maintenance and other advanced techniques can certainly help, there is one simple thing that is right in front of your nose and that is rarely utilized to its full potential – an equipment maintenance log.
In this article, we will look at the benefits of having an accurate equipment maintenance log and discuss the best practices on how to keep it that way.
