Computerized Maintenance Management Software

Dec.10, 2009 in Computers

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems incorporate the critical componant of computerized maintenance management software (CMMS). Maintenance management software adds data to its database; usually capturing info about plant, spares and infrastructure. By using CMMS, managers can significantly cut expenditure by their organisation on parts stocked, management report creation and plant, particularly in relation to down-time. Normally, the maintenance management system will report these as part of an organization’s performance management measures.

Computerized Maintenance Management Software or Spreadsheets?
Spreadsheets allow managers to assess equipment effectiveness but they are cumbersome and time consuming. These give a basic idea of the performance of plant and systems but the data is not easily manipulated, analyzed or presented. This is where a CMMS solution is ideal. A CMMS enables automatic reconfiguring of data, production of graphical reports and enables managers to more easily identify weaknesses in the economics of the system or its technical operation. The case for investment in equipment and training can be more easily and powerfully presented.

Specialist CMMS Applications
Specialist applications for CMMS systems are health and safety compliance, equipment calibration regimes and customer auditing. Today’s CMMS solutions offer general functionality, but more often than not come with modules for specific applications. These might include:

Sports stadia, theatres, cinemas facilities
Gas, electricity and water utilities
Ports, railroad operators
Manufacturing industries

Use CMMS to Monitor Assets
Monitoring assets effectively is a considerable part of any CMMS solution. A major part is played by current and new technologies.

Use CMMS to Proactively Predict Condition of Parts
CMMS allows maintenance managers to implement increasingly-sophisticated practices such as Condition Based Maintenance (CBM) which is a proactive predictive system of estimating the condition of a component and replacing it prior to failure. Much better than firefighting, it requires the CMMS to hold more detailed information about each component along with its estimated MTBF, usage and age data.

Increasing Requirement for CMMS
Large multi-national companies need CMMS systems in order to manage their response to:the race to compete globally and ever more expensive raw products and energy bills,acquisition by other organisations; either hostile or friendly, customer and legislation-led environmental efficiency requirements,the cost of removal and destruction of machinery and waste. An organisation’s OEE is thereby effected by how well the CMMS is introduced. You can find out more about implementing maintenance management system here.