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It’s easy to become overwhelmed with the vast amount of terminology used to describe maintenance concepts. Even those who are familiar with various maintenance management terms know there is a lack of consistency among sources. This guide to maintenance management terminology serves to help teams better understand the differences between key phrases used in the industry. Browse through our maintenance glossary below. [Read more…]
Maintenance workflow is the step-by-step process that gets initiated by some trigger event to the point where the action is closed out. For example, in a typical maintenance operation, a trigger event could be a report of faulty equipment. The step-by-step workflow process would include the generation of a maintenance order, the planning of the task, the execution of the repair and the reporting at the end of the job. Every organization has a workflow process whether it is officially documented or not; there is always a standard way to get things done. When this process is not well-defined, it can lead to frustrations on the part of employees trying to get their jobs done as well as major inefficiencies that are costly to the organization over time. In comes maintenance management software…
Is your organization best suited for a cloud based CMMS or on-premise maintenance software? As the price of bandwidth and storage continues to decrease, cloud-based maintenance software is becoming an increasingly popular choice. Many cloud-based CMMS/EAM software vendors are pushing this technology as a convenient and cost-effective alternative to traditional, on-premise software, but cloud-based solutions aren’t necessarily right for everyone. There is no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution, so you would be better off exploring the pros and cons of cloud-based vs on-premise CMMS options before committing to any particular technology. [Read more…]
Maintenance of different equipment within a facility remains a core enabler of improved productivity and efficiency of plant processes. Poor maintenance practices lead to machine downtime, increased operational costs, and increased maintenance workloads.
Reducing maintenance workload can’t be done overnight, but it is a goal worth pursuing. Less maintenance work performed (without an increase in reactive maintenance work) means less resources spent – fewer spare parts used, less overtime work, and improved employee satisfaction that can actually increase the average quality of performed maintenance work.
Improving the reliability of performed maintenance work helps in the refinement and improvement of policies that shape a cost-effective maintenance strategy that aims to address dominant causes of asset failure.
Before we continue, we have to define how reliable maintenance looks like. In the context of this article, we will define it as consistently performing adequate maintenance in the required time frame. In other words, it means performing good maintenance work while respecting due dates.
At first glance, a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) and Failure Modes And Effects Analysis (FMEA) may appear to be worlds apart. But take a deeper dive, and it’s easy to see that they both share a common component: data. The core of any CMMS is defined by gigabytes of data that guarantee its usefulness and functionality, while the success of the systematic steps in FMEA depends on good quality data.
The biggest change in asset management practices and maintenance models in the coming years will be the shift from corrective and preventive to predictive and condition-based maintenance that is built on real-time as well as historical data.
With emerging new technologies like IoT (Internet of Things) and easy access to the Internet and cloud storage capabilities, accessibility to information and remote monitoring of assets can be done anytime and from any location and device. This calls for a reliable remote monitoring setup accompanied by a robust and proven management system to track and manage all that data. And it is this combination precisely that can elevate your business to a world-class maintenance program.
Emergency maintenance is the maintenance required when an asset suffers an unexpected functional failure. Typically, such failures can halt production lines and disrupt business operations until fixed.
Emergencies almost always happen without prior warning, and hence emergency maintenance is not one that can be preemptively scheduled – but it can definitely be planned for and efforts made to reduce its business impact when they do occur.
Your facility asset and equipment are first and foremost a significant organizational investment. Performing routine maintenance on them is a key aspect of maintaining them in functioning order. Nothing will risk derailing production like an unexpected catastrophic failure of critical equipment – and one of the best ways to prevent that is to develop a robust routine maintenance strategy for your assets.
Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a widely implemented metric that characterizes the performance of a plant, and is expressed as a percentage of the total planned or scheduled production time. OEE essentially measures your plant’s performance in terms of equipment reliability and availability. It is calculated as the product of 3 factors – performance, quality, and availability:
Maintain equipment, minimize downtime, meet production demands, manage inventory levels, monitor staff productivity, comply with regulatory standards, etc. etc. The list of maintenance demands in a manufacturing plant is nearly impossible to meet without the help of computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS). Manufacturing CMMS software automates the process of maintaining assets to help simplify operations, maximize uptime and control costs.
Many manufacturing plants are relying on outdated systems or maintenance spreadsheets to keep tabs on their equipment and other important aspects of production. In doing so, they run the risk of premature equipment failure, production lags, increased downtime and, ultimately, the loss of business. Consequently, competitors utilizing modern manufacturing CMMS software are more successful.
As the owner or maintenance manager at a busy organization, one of your priorities will be to monitor the efficiency of your maintenance team to sustain that level of efficiency (if it’s satisfactory), or improving it (if it’s below an acceptable level). Doing this will require that, among other things, you understand what’s really going on while staff are on the job and then identify any areas for improvement.
Over the last few decades, advancements in technology have dramatically changed the maintenance and reliability industry. Organizations have invested heavily in automation and technology to reduce staff overhead, improve product quality and increase safety. One thing that hasn’t changed much in the last few decades is preventive maintenance, or PM. PM is all about performing routine maintenance to improve equipment reliability, performance and cost-effectiveness. If applied correctly, PM has the capacity to transform an organization’s maintenance approach and lead to significant improvements in equipment reliability. However, there are many mistakes that can ruin an organization’s PM program.
The following are seven preventive maintenance mistakes to avoid: [Read more…]
Instead of allocating time and resources trying to force the same maintenance method on every asset in your facility, reliability centered maintenance (RCM) offers you a more structured and proven approach where each piece of equipment is allocated a befitting maintenance strategy based on the results of a well-executed RCM analysis.
Selecting CMMS software is a significant decision for an organization. Another equally significant milestone is rolling out multi-site CMMS software—scaling your CMMS system from one site to multiple sites. There are two distinct ways in which in this transition may occur.
The first is when a multi-site organization test pilots CMMS software at a single location initially. In this situation, the organization has satisfied all concerns with the initial implementation at the pilot site and is ready to expand the implementation to its other locations. [Read more…]