A CMMS has been associated to "solving all maintenance problems", but in reality, a CMMS is only as good as the maintenance organization uses it. I like to compare it to file cabinet organization, being, both are only as good as how they are built, organized, used and maintained. Having a best-in-class CMMS is a "living document or requirement", to capture and maintain all asset data. All too often CMMS's are designed for accounting purposes and not for maximum maintenance/asset optimization.
In reality, the best CMMS is a "one stop shop" for all the information the maintenance organization needs for quick and efficient asset information location, leading to best-in-practice asset reliability. Listed is a small snapshot with my real time experience challenges.
- Who is the "Gatekeeper" and are there written standards for specified CMMS use including rules for specific job positions whom interact with the CMMS? If new personnel interact with the CMMS, will they make damaging changes as to what they think or like; Or will they be required to follow the specified standard and rules. Can it last the test of time and personnel? Is a Reliability Engineer the Gatekeeper?
- Are all the assets listed in detail? Including all asset nameplate information and exact location the asset is located? Is all activity on an asset captured in the CMMS? As a leader, the first place I would go when I needed to review, order parts, look at failures and examine actual to KPI performance, PMO etc. was the CMMS. Also if you are informed of a failure, are you required to waste time to travel to find the nameplate data and was the asset easily located to find, vs. instantly finding the information in the CMMS?
- What is your maintenance strategy for your CMMS? What is your frequency of CMMS review/refresh? What is your most to least important/critical asset and how do you build your Bill of Materials (BOM), manage of change (MOC)? Are you capturing your transition to Predictive Maintenance? As a planner I needed to know most to least importance of assets so I could correctly apply the Ranking Index for Maintenance Expenditures (RIME) methodology for work order planning and scheduling. I also quickly needed to find parts on the asset and to what vendor.
- Is your CMMS a part of your EAM to enable work order building directly to the asset, including requisitioning parts through the work order directly to the asset? As a planner I could capture and improve all my planning work directly to the asset; including shopping in the BOM for parts, stock and non-stock, making repeat work order creation/ordering a breeze. And capturing all parts, labor and material movements for total cost to the asset.
At this point, I hope you can see the importance of CMMS data accuracy and strategy. And how this can make real time PMO optimization a reality.
In this discussion we only touched the tip of the iceberg and the importance of a Best-In- Class/Practice CMMS.
Thoughts?
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Terry Alexander
Sr. Reliability Engineer
Life Cycle Engineering
Charleston SC
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