Karl, appreciate the response. eMaint is on our shortlist for sure. Very helpful comments on the people side, much appreciated. On the "knobology" side, here is what I'm seeing as we're exploring various ones:
1. Some but not all have customizable statuses. That is a MUST for us. For example, even within the planners' statuses, there would be "PLN - Awaiting planning", "PLN - being planned", "PLN - awaiting material", "PLN - supervisor review". That way the MM (me) and respective Supv have common 'control levers' with the planners to identify which ones they're working on. By using filters and teaching people a minimal cyclic routine, jobs can move along pretty efficiently. Ultimately our list would be close to those found in Ramesh Gulati's "M&R Best Practices".
2. "When" codes - ie "TG 1 outage", "OTR" (on the run - default one), etc. This is how we identify work that can occur in any outage of that unit, and then the "when" code plus scheduled date is how we select which ones are for a specific upcoming outage (and usually scheduled date is blank unless coming up in foreseeable future). None that I've seen have this field built in but most allow custom fields. The key for us though is our most often used fields need to also be batch editable rather than going to individual WO's to make edits, so that is the downfall of custom fields as that's not always an option for custom fields.
3. Some but not all have a messaging feature. Appended messages with the option for email notifications are ideal. Some just have a single "comments" field that you can add to, but the entries aren't date/time stamped or show the user or provide a notification when added to, plus nothing is stopping someone from accidentally erasing past comments.
4. Some have limitations such as only allowing a single PO or require non-inventory purchases to be ordered the same way as stocked items, but at least for latter you can do a work-around by having a stocked part called "non-stock" and use it often when PO'ing
5. On PO's also, many require manual cross-referencing, going back and forth between the WO and an open PO list that is not specific to that WO but is showing all the open PO's. I'd like to be able to add/reserve inventory parts in one area in the WO then non-inventory in another area in the WO. Then for non-inventory, check off applicable ones and cut a PO or tell the CMMS we used a P card. There should be a field on that item line showing the PO# (which is fine if it is a separate serialized CMMS generated PO# that is different than the integrated ERP PO# but ideally the latter is fed back via the API's) and another field showing the PO status. So let's say there's 8 parts comprising 3 different PO's. Should be able to quickly see if they're "received", "awaiting approval", "ordered", etc without having to leave the WO. The perfect solution would have a parts summary field rolled up to the main WO screen, something like:
"Needs PO(s)" if there are parts without PO's
"Needs material" if all parts have PO's but not all received AND/OR inventory parts on the WO are stocked out
"All received" - all listed parts are in a "received" status and therefore don't need to open to WO or x-reference the PO log to see this
(Seems like a contradiction that we'd want a field like this when previously mentioned the status field would track "awaiting materials" but the gain there is material may be all received but planner should still manually roll status to "Ready" when parts are kitted in our staging area / tagged with WO# / etc rather than simply received in W/H).
6. Some but not all have asset BOM's or EPL's (equipment parts lists) so you can one source - one truth the parts lists for identical assets, editing the BOM/EPL once and then that affects the parts list of all assets that have that BOM/EPL. Others, if you notice your Peerless XXX model pumps didn't have a few parts listed, you have to go into each of the asset entries and add those missing parts to each one.
7. Some don't handle crews/shops/depts intuitively, requiring you to use the "assigned to" field. I consider these separate concepts. Crew is associated with the WO from day 1. "Assigned to" is only needed prior to scheduling and to me should be limited to the technician(s).
8. Back to scheduling. Some have pretty cool calendar functions, but there are limitations with the selections of WO's to calendar. Ie so as to not have to sift through them all or text search them I'd like to apply a filter showing just WO's in "Scheduled" or "In Progress" status and then drag those onto the dates/people rows. So ideally it would be just as easy to call up the same list of scheduled jobs on the calendar as we can on the main WO list screen. It also needs to be easy to drop jobs off the calendar. Not having a ton of luck here.
In general, for fields/features we consider to be "Tier 1", they should all be observable from the WO list screen so we want them all to have batch editing capability, ability to filter by them and save filters so we can "walk the filters" as we do our workflow, and ability to select if these fields are required data entry fields for service requests. Generally the custom fields don't have all of these capabilities.
Does make me wonder if I'm too picky/exacting or if I'm right on target requirement-wise and this is a common list of problems needing workarounds! Or maybe someone who reads this knows of one that can do the majority of these
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Cyrus Brown
Kahului HI
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Original Message:
Sent: 12-14-2022 09:50 PM
From: Karl Burnett
Subject: CMMS use - people side
Aloha Cyrus!
I'm surprised no one has responded to you. I implemented a project that replaced an old version of Maximo with an even older version of SAP, so I hear you. Lots of people hated the interface so much, there was no hope for them actually adopting it. This was true fo technicians, planners, and engineers.
The only up-from-his-tools 20-year maintenance manager could pick his own CMMS without outside meddling...picked E-Maint. He loved it. It was inherently mobile, the devices were good in classified areas, and he could simplify the interface to his guys' tastes and the problems he was actually trying to solve. So everyone had a wifi-enabled android device, from what I understand.
Planners: for me, work order assignment depends on the planner's strengths. Some have strong craft competency, and some have a strong unit familiarity. Underground stuff goes to one guy, electrical to another, but this one weird area of the plant goes to a different one no matter what. I have a gatekeeping and assignment process to sort this. This is the supervisor's job. He also schedules, and dispatches the shift maintenance crew.
Work order source: a competent CMMS should have this. Maximo had a "parent work order" and "followup work order." SAP only had the parent-child relationship so was especially deficient for a cadillac program. For followup work, we could assign a new "work type" to the work order. Most work orders were corrective or scheduled so had certain codes. For work caused by a PM or from a PdM route like a vibration finding, we had a different worktype. The supervisor had to enforce assignment of these work order type codes during the gatekeeping process.
Example: the vibration tech doing his route finds that a motor coupling is going to be a problem, but we cant fix it until the next scheduled outage 12 months later. He'd code this workorder as type "0070" for "PdM." The work order should be a "followup" to the PM-generated worker. This should be queriable later without doing backflips. The gatekeeper would assign a revision "Plant TAR" so it would go into the outage backlog. If the tech slipped on leaking fluid from an active pipe leak he happened to notice while walking the vibration route, he'd write a different work order that didn't reference the vibration route. This would get a "0010" for "Corrective." The gatekeeper would then screen this for (a) emergency or shift maintenance, or (b) put on the schedule. Gatekeeper would communicate with the area supervisor to decide on the priority based on safety, system availability, etc.
So in setting up the new system, you need to be able to define your own work types depending on your current planning and scheduling process, and depending on the future planning and scheduling process that you envision for your future organization.
Also...we made flowcharts for this kind of work flow and distributed them everywhere, especially to operations. Then I had to involve myself in the daily meetings and coach the right behavior (especially from operations...).
Excellent resources:
John Reeve: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/john-reeve-9b264411_the-purpose-of-failure-coding-is-not-activity-7008303159798349824-IBWk?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop
Doc Palmer: https://www.amazon.com/Maintenance-Planning-Scheduling-Handbook-4th/dp/1260135284
(I used a previous edition, purchased used for about $10, best bang for the buck ever!)
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Karl Burnett
General Electric
Anderson SC
Original Message:
Sent: 12-03-2022 02:22 AM
From: Cyrus Brown
Subject: CMMS use - people side
I searched and I read over the past discussions on different CMMS's. This is a variation on that topic, agnostic to any particular platform. I'm in a new company and about to implement a professional level CMMS, something like Fiix, not quite as advanced as Maximo. In the past I've used an Oracle product that was custom built to fleet of waste to energy plants. It took a lot of workarounds to make it work the way we work in real life. Here I want to see how you guys do certain things, both at the people level and the associated 'knobology' in the system
Technician interactions
I want to dabble with having the guys use the phone app but we've got some older guys that are worth their weight in gold where it counts but would struggle to enter data into their phone. So the other option I can think of is desktop machines at end of shift. But 17 guys needing to enter data in a brief window, and one computer each is doable but far from ideal. Maybe those who can use phone should and others would use a handful of computers. Anyone encountered this? In the waste to energy plant we did all paper work orders, and I read the comments religiously, but no one had time to transcribe them into the CMMS.
Planner interactions
I want to make sure I track planned vs unplanned, plus have accountability. We don't have planner(s) yet. But we do fit the criteria for even a low crafts to planner ratio so I'm hoping to add a planner to electrical & mechanical crews. Over time we'll grow headcount and as our programs mature the planners can cover more crafts. I'm curious if most people use the assigned to.. function and choose a planner of if they use the work order status to kick jobs to planning or both. I'm leaning towards the latter then having custom fields where the planner enters name manually if job is planned before rolling status to "Ready work".
Work order source
I'm curious how you guys track CM's that result from PdMs/CBMs. I want to do this to track PM yield to optimize inspection intervals and identify low value ones. Sure you could do a custom field but what I'm not seeing is a CMMS that has a list field that allows you to select from the PM's you have, so hopefully I could talk them into adding that feature.
Thanks!
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Cyrus Brown
Kahului HI
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