CMMS System

For the success of the project, the installation of a CMMS system requires a detailed and in-depth preliminary study of the needs, a precise definition of the objectives, a careful preparation of the participants and the support of all. In fact, this type of project must be promoted by the managers and must actively involve all the employees. These prerequisites will allow, on the one hand to make a relevant choice among the market proposals and, on the other hand, to turn to the most brilliant and effective organizations.

It is interesting to observe the statistics of a survey that involved students with internship experience in the field of maintenance or who have worked as interns in a company. About 20% chose the “selection and installation of a CMMS tool in our company” as the theme of their final report. After six months of consultations and discussions, sometimes difficult, between the various services, it turns out that the main problem related to CMMS is not of a technical nature but requires a cultural change that must be approved by all the services and managers of the company: purchases, methods, manufacturing, reactive maintenance, new projects and accounting. Most of these reports conclude that failure is almost inevitable in the absence of a person explicitly designated to take responsibility for the CMMS project, even if the specifications have been clearly defined and the CMMS software has been purchased and installed. It may also happen that the instrument is no longer used as soon as the student leaves, even if it seemed to have been well accepted and considered satisfactory.

The decision to invest in a CMMS tool calls into question the habits acquired by the various services of the company which, for historical reasons, use different coding systems for the same plant according to their particular field of activity (purchase, methods, new projects, maintenance or management). The offer of CMMS products and the market is moving towards the use of portable technologies, which will lead to a new questioning of the habits acquired after the first installation.

It is always difficult for decision makers to make a choice that lasts over time and is appropriate for your business. Many companies that, ten years ago, decided to invest in a particular product, are now changing their strategies to adopt software packages that become de facto standards: a situation that some people find regrettable compared to traditional office software.

What is a CMMS?

The CMMS is part of the information, management and control system of the maintenance function, whose purpose is to keep the plants and buildings in order to be able to constantly meet the design specifications, efficiently and economically. The IT management tool is therefore an aid for monitoring, archiving, analysis and decision-making.

Why is a CMMS important? Remaining in a general context, the CMMS can therefore be an aid to decision making that allows:

– Managing the costs of the plants to be maintained,
– Ensuring the long-term preservation of assets,
– Optimizing technical and human resources for maintenance,
– Managing the preparation of the interventions, their planning and their costs,
– Optimizing the management of spare parts stock in order to reduce the stock value without compromising the availability of the equipment,
– Making an inventory of technical and documental installations,
– Increasing plant reliability by analyzing the return of formalized and capitalized experience, making decisions about it and preparing motivated action plans.

From the various points above we can conclude that a CMMS system is very crucial for a modern maintenance process and therefore, must be present and adapted to the parameters of production owned.