CMMS solutions can benefit most facilities; however, it is the lack of expertise in implementing one successfully that can undermine the achievement of desired results.
Thankfully, there are steps that you can follow before, during, and after CMMS implementation to ensure that your system launch turns out to be a success.
Tips To Implement A CMMS Solution In Your Company
The initial steps that you must execute happen before the selection of the CMMS software. While it may allure you to save time and hop onto the first decent-looking CMMS you discover, a concrete plan will render an error-free end product installation.
Here are some critical details to plan for CMMS implementation –
- Determine The Scope Of Your Project
Rushing to acquire a CMMS package often leads to a rush in implementation. One of the top reasons for implementation failure is erroneous CMMS selection.
Ask yourself – what do you want to achieve with a CMMS tool? What modules does your business require? What would be the corrective maintenance costs and will you interface it with other systems?
- Project Planning
Go about your implementation from beginning to end in your mind. Determine which party will implement the CMMS, who will acquire data and what data types will be gathered.
Devise part numbering schemes, location schemes, an equipment ID scheme, labor as-well-as material charge accounts. Also, be sure to define code tables with your team that includes work order type, work order status, and completion remark codes.
If you are looking for decent maintenance management software at affordable pricing, find a company that helps companies scale intelligently and speeds up the process.
- Acquire Management Commitment
Executive management rarely possesses a distinct perception of CMMS or the types of initial as-well-as ongoing resources that must get committed to the project.
Apart from the acquisition software cost, there exist ongoing expenses for maintenance, data gathering and data entry, training, and more.
Make sure that you include these costs in the project estimate to paint a full picture of the time and budget required for your project to the upper management.
- Brace For Change
Do not assume that all of your staff will accept the CMMS without hesitation. Employees might fear losing their jobs to CMMS solutions in the future.
You must ensure the active involvement of all of your employees beforehand. You can do this by publishing informational memos about the transition and organizing Q&A sessions to gather employee input.
Evaluate the obstacles that your current maintenance workers encounter in terms of data gathering and data entry. Understand why your employees are resistant to CMMS and figure out ways to convince them to embrace change.
- Training
CMMS is an intricate application and requires training for all employees to understand the system properly. You will have to conduct initial software training from the CMMS vendor as-well-as ongoing training for your staff.
Training employees about the way your company employs CMMS is paramount. Training is a process that will go on as you hire new employees or promote some, who will then require training to use the software at their hierarchy.
- Data Acquisition
Gathering all the usable information that your employees will have to enter into the CMMS is by far the most significant factor that leads to implementation project failure.
The effective gathering of all the data typically demands six to twelve months of dedicated resources.
Determining the type of data to be gathered (equipment model, cost, serial numbers, procedures and frequencies, warranty data, and parts) and ways to acquire this data plays a vital component in your implementation plan.
- Data Entry
After planning your implementation, purchasing a CMMS system, and acquiring relevant data, you must have a concrete plan to enter the data.
Entering all the data you have acquired is laborious, and thus, you must consider outside contractors, current employees, or temporary hires to do the job for you.
The next step is figuring out the best method of entering the relevant information that will get managed by the CMMS.
Consider an administrative assistant to enter completed work orders at the day’s end, or delegate each maintenance technician to enter their own completed work orders.
- Analysis & Reports
Have four or five efficient and valuable reports for your system, and think about who will analyze these reports daily.
Be sure to know act upon the decisions that will get executed based on the evaluations. Before setting up your system, understand what you need the system to perform for you.
Ensure that the reports provide you with the data required to understand short as well as long-term trends in the maintenance operation.
- Constant Improvements
Do not merely use the CMMS as a record-keeping tool to maintain lists of your assets as-well-as their parts. Ensure that your employees are aware of the functionality of CMMS. You must devise ways to enhance your use of it in the future.
A CMMS lets you review a substantial amount of trackable data to help you spot trends, analyze them and take corrective action. The CMMS can help you figure out why your company might be dealing with failures.
- Links & Attachments
Some systems let you add several types of documents, including Word, PDF, scanned copies, digital images, audios, videos, and Weblinks to records.
CMMS attachments let anyone access the information saved by a former employee about using CMMS solutions to understand how the repair can get completed.
The attachment tool is also practical for attaching PDF versions of authentic manuals, training guides, as-well-as other paper-only materials, all of which are susceptible to getting misplaced.
The Aid Of CMMS Software In Corrective Maintenance
There are five examples of corrective maintenance –
- Emergency Repair
- Service Outages
- Repair
- Performance
- Quality
Every maintenance team strives to reduce asset downtime. A CMMS software stores information regarding corrective maintenance activities and automatically sets up a maintenance history.
During critical corrective maintenance tasks, CMMS enables technicians to check the service history of an asset swiftly. This gesture speeds up troubleshooting and repairs.
You can analyze corrective maintenance data to figure out voguish trends, spawning future preventive maintenance to help steer clear of a future failure.
Final Words
Across the entire CMMS implementation process, ask the CMMS vendor to assist you. During pre-implementation, ask them to conduct product demonstrations for your whole team to ensure that the product is a satisfactory fit for everyone.
During implementation, ask for help from vendors about data migration. During post-implementation, ask them for ways to use the data you have collected.
By adhering to the steps mentioned above and warding off the most common implementation failures, you will become a part of the 30% of companies that have successfully implemented a CMMS.