Computerized Maintenance Management System
Computerized Maintenance Management System
Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is a computerized data base designed to optimize the management of maintenance activities in an organization. It is an orderly and systematic approach to planning, organizing, monitoring and evaluating maintenance activities and their costs. It is a management tool for planning and budgeting of equipment maintenance (routine, break down, preventive and predictive), capital repairs and equipment replacement activities.
A good CMMS coupled with knowledgeable and capable maintenance work force can prevent problems related to equipment health, safety and environment deterioration. It CMMS also ensures that the organization maximizes the available maintenance resources it has at a plant, minimizes the operational downtime of its equipment, reduces the overall maintenance costs within the organization, improves the quality of the management decisions, helps in the verification of the regulatory compliance, and extends the life of the equipment at the plant. It also contributes into lowering of capital costs and improvement in quality of life. CMMS automates most of the functions performed by the maintenance personnel in an organization and hence improve their effectiveness. The main component of a CMMS is shown in Fig 1.
Fig 1 Main components of a CMMS
Objectives of CMMS
The primary objectives of a CMMS are as follows.
• To optimize the use of available funds, personnel, facilities and equipment through effective maintenance management methods.
• To monitor the equipment conditions.
• To provide accurate data for decision making regarding maintenance activities.
• To identify systematically maintenance needs and equipment deficiencies as well as needs for capital repairs.
• To determine the maintenance backlog and made provision for this maintenance.
• To determine the maintenance priorities and plan accordingly
• To enable preparation of maintenance budget using systematic standardized procedures.
• To monitor and document corrective actions, maintenance expenditures, and accomplishment.
• To monitor the inventory status.
Functions of CMMS
Typical CMMS functions include the following.
• Scheduling of the maintenance activity.
• Maintenance and tracking of equipment historical data and their health.
• Monitoring of maintenance related equipment operational data.
• Tracking of preventive maintenance and conditioned based monitoring schedules.
• Providing triggers and alerts. These can be time based or number of cycles based.
• Work order generation, prioritization, and tracking by equipment/component.
• Historical tracking of all the generated work orders. The work orders are sortable by equipment, date, or any other criteria.
• The scheduled and unscheduled maintenance activities can be tracked.
• All the maintenance procedures and technical documentations can be stored.
• Maintenance of records
• Real time reports of ongoing work activity.
• Spares inventory and consumption management
• Consumables inventory and consumption management
• Cost tracking component, assistance in the budget preparation and monitoring of the budget expenditure.
• Interface with other management and control systems for integration of CMMS with other systems.
• Tracking of the work orders placed on engineering shops.
• Management of purchase requisitions and tracking of purchased items.
• Management of outsourced activities contractor wise.
• Tracking of the performance of contractors for outsourced activities
• Assistance in training of the maintenance personnel
Maintenance of documentation of records makes possible the auditing of the system which in turn helps in taking corrective and preventive actions based on observance of non conformance. These audited data is helpful not only in management control of maintenance activities but also useful for insurance claims and during investigations in case of an accident.
Important issues associated with CMMS
CMMS has also got some of the important issues which need serious considerations in its implementation since CMMS is not only used by the maintenance engineers but also by other employees of the organization who are connected with the maintenance activities.
• Commitment from the management and all the employees involved is very necessary.
• Reflection of site specific decisions in the CMMS is not there unless they are data based.
• All the personnel using CMMS are to be thoroughly trained on input, function and maintenance of CMMS. Further inadequate training of the personnel in the use of CMMS will make the system ineffective.
• The data input to the system is to be done promptly, correctly and sincerely. Inaccurate and inadequate feeding of the data as well as delay in feeding data to the system will decrease the system utility.
• Since CMMS is a computerized system, it needs a continuous technical support from the supplier. Hardware involved in the system should not become outdated in near future and a committed availability of the component should be ensured.
Benefits of CMMS
CMMS has the following benefits
• Eliminates a major percentage of the paperwork
• Eliminates the manual tracking activities
• Makes the maintenance personnel and related employees more productive and improves the efficiencies of maintenance and related activities.
• Makes available all the relevant information to the maintenance manager as well as to the management for taking decisions.
• Helps in detection of impending problem before a failure occurs. This in turn reduces the unexpected failures.
• Helps in achievement of a higher level of planned maintenance activities that enables a more efficient use of resources.
• Helps in inventory control by enabling better spare parts and consumables forecasting. This helps avoidance of maintaining an over inventory besides elimination of shortages.
• Helps in optimum equipment performance that reduces downtime and results into longer equipment life.
Other issues
There is a lot of work is needed for setting of a successful CMMS. However, once it is in place, CMMS does not require changes very often. There are many CMMS systems which are available in the market. All of them have their strengths and weaknesses. CMMS should not only bring out only good reports but these reports are also to be customized to meet the needs of the organization. The language of the data base is to be compatible with other management systems for proper integration. Further with the proper implementation of the system, CMMS can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the plant maintenance and hence improve the profitability of the organization.
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