Managing assets is crucial, as mismanaged or poorly maintained assets could cost you. Implementing maintenance management initiatives might be a good place to start. To maximize the effectiveness of your assets while keeping expenses in check, you need CMMS software.

Let’s deep dive into what maintenance management entails and how organizations can benefit from it.

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What This Article Covers:

• What Is Maintenance Management?
• Objectives
• Types
• Benefits
• Maintenance Management vs. Asset Management
• CMMS vs. EAM
• Industry-wise Examples
• Who Should Have Access To Your CMMS?
• Next Steps

What Is Maintenance Management?

Maintenance management is the process of planning, scheduling and overseeing the upkeep of machinery and vehicles.

Preventative maintenance entails planning for future problems and then carrying out those plans regularly.

Checking and changing your fleet’s oil regularly is a good illustration of this. You can use machine learning in more advanced tactics to determine which components are under strain and need replacement.

Increased access to real-time information may help you simplify and save money on maintenance tasks. However, this isn’t the only factor that makes it crucial for commercial enterprises.

To better understand what maintenance management is and how you can effectively deploy it, we’ll first look at its objectives and types.

Objectives

The objectives of maintenance management are:

1. To ensure equipment availability and reliability
2. To reduce equipment downtime and increase overall equipment efficiency
3. To maintain equipment in a safe and secure condition
4. To prolong the life span of equipment and reduce the need for replacements
5. To minimize maintenance costs and maximize cost-effectiveness
6. To ensure compliance with industry regulations and standards
7. To improve operational efficiency and achieve organizational goals

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Types

There are four types of maintenance. You can use them alone or in conjunction to help your business create a maintenance plan that meets your needs and stays within budget.

Reactive Maintenance

Reactive maintenance, also called corrective maintenance, is when you carry out maintenance after a breakdown. When an asset breaks down, it leads to unscheduled downtime. You can apply reactive maintenance to less important, non-critical machinery that has little bearing on your bottom line during downtime.

Preventative Maintenance

Preventative maintenance involves regularly scheduling repairs to avoid breakdowns and unanticipated downtime. It should focus on crucial machinery that has a heavy financial and operational influence on your company.

If you’re confused about what type of maintenance to implement in your facility, you can read about preventative vs. reactive maintenance to make an informed decision.

Predictive Maintenance

Predictive maintenance involves using IoT sensors and analytics programs to monitor machinery in real time. It can help you spot any degradation or abnormalities that might lead to a breakdown following the program’s preset failure thresholds.

In contrast to preventive maintenance, predictive maintenance takes a condition-based maintenance approach.

Asset and energy-intensive sectors such as the oil, gas, power and manufacturing industries are some of the early adopters of predictive maintenance.

Reliability-centered Maintenance

Reliability-centered maintenance plans are tailored to each organization’s requirements to maximize assets’ reliability. The long-term goal is to identify potential points of failure to improve equipment’s overall safety and dependability.

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Primary Benefits

Maintenance management offers a range of benefits:

Increased Labor Output

Unexpected equipment failures pose a hazard to the health and safety of workers and customers in the retail and industrial sectors. They have a negative effect on the bottom line due to interruptions to business operations.

In the workplace, poor maintenance may lead to issues like inadequate lighting, uncomfortably cold or hot HVAC systems, and many electrical and fire dangers. These disrupt operations and reduce employee productivity.

The safety, health and productivity of every person and piece of equipment in your building might hinge on the efficacy of your facility’s maintenance management system, which can help you spot problems before they escalate into full-blown breakdowns.

Decreased Running Expenses

If you’re in a run-to-failure maintenance situation and need a replacement component for your equipment, then the expense of your emergency maintenance work will skyrocket.

The price of expedited shipment for a replacement component is more than for regular shipping. Not only that, but companies stand to lose a lot of money if they have to suspend operations until the broken component is fixed.

Maintenance management extends the useful life of assets by keeping them operating as the original designers intended and minimizing the likelihood of failure and associated downtime.

Extended Asset Usefulness

Maintenance management teams use maintenance KPIs and metrics to monitor the health and effectiveness of physical assets over time. Some of the most common are mean time between failure (MTBF), mean time to repair, and remaining useful life of an asset.

CMMS software helps you make sure each asset serves its purpose and remains useful for its expected lifetime with low operating expenses.

Improved Decision-making

Data can help you boost your organization’s productivity by influencing decisions about operations and maintenance. You can comprehend and avoid maintainability problems by reviewing related maintenance management records.

For example, you can swap an underperforming asset with a newer one instead of extensively maintaining it, if it’s cheaper to do so in the long run.

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Maintenance Management vs. Asset Management

Maintenance management and asset management are two distinct disciplines. However, they work together seamlessly.

Asset management involves examining all the data for the work that needs to be done on each asset to reap maximum ROI. On the other hand, maintenance management focuses more on equipment’s physical performance and maintenance.

Working with assets to increase their dependability is a significant part of maintenance management.

With asset management, you keep tabs on how well your organization’s assets are doing and adjust operations accordingly. Some benefits of asset management methods include optimized equipment functioning, decreased running expenses and increased ROI.

With maintenance management, you monitor your company’s assets like materials and equipment using a CMMS. The data collected by this system may help guide the development of new maintenance procedures or enhance existing ones.

Proper maintenance management can help keep your company’s machinery in top shape and reduce the frequency of breakdowns and unplanned repairs.

Most contemporary CMMS systems combine the two features, allowing maintenance workers to see both types of information in a single interface. Check out our article to learn more about CMMS features and functionality.

CMMS vs. EAM

CMMS and enterprise asset management (EAM) software are two types of systems you can use to manage maintenance activities. Although there are some similarities between the two systems, there are also some key differences:

• Scope: CMMS focuses specifically on maintenance management, while EAM is a broader system that covers a wide range of asset management activities, including maintenance, procurement and financial management processes.
• Features: CMMS typically includes features such as work order management modules, preventative maintenance tools, equipment trackers and inventory management software. EAM systems generally have more extensive features, including asset tracking, procurement modules, and financial management tools.
• Complexity: EAM systems are generally more complex than CMMS systems, due to the wider range of features they offer.
• Cost: EAM systems are generally more expensive than CMMS systems, due to the increased complexity and broader range of features they offer.
• Customization: EAM systems can be more easily customized to meet the specific needs of an organization, while CMMS systems may be more limited in this regard.

The choice between a CMMS vs. EAM system will depend on the specific needs of your organization and the level of complexity and customization you require. Generally, larger organizations with a wide range of assets may benefit from an EAM system, while smaller businesses may be better served by a CMMS system.

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Industry Examples

Maintenance management has different uses in different industries. Let’s take a look at some industries and how they apply maintenance management in their sectors.

Manufacturing

In the manufacturing industry, maintenance management is crucial for ensuring the reliability and efficiency of production equipment. Regular maintenance helps you reduce downtime and increase your overall equipment efficiency.

Facility managers can achieve this through regular checks, machinery maintenance and preventative maintenance programs. This helps you identify potential problems before they become major issues, prolong the life span of equipment and minimize maintenance costs.

Health Care

In the health care industry, maintenance management is essential for maintaining the safety and functionality of medical equipment. Regular maintenance helps you make sure that equipment functions properly and complies with regulatory requirements.

This includes regular inspections and maintenance of hospital equipment, such as X-ray machines, ventilators and dialysis machines. Regular maintenance also helps extend the life span of equipment and reduces the need for replacements, which can be expensive and time-consuming.

Transportation

In the transportation industry, maintenance management is crucial for ensuring the safety and reliability of vehicles. You can improve vehicle efficiency and decrease downtime with routine maintenance. You can accomplish this by performing routine vehicle inspections and maintenance, as well as by putting a preventative maintenance plan in place for trucks and buses.

Energy

In the energy industry, maintenance management is essential for ensuring the efficiency and safety of power plants. Equipment compliance with legal standards and proper operation are both supported by routine maintenance. Additionally, preventive maintenance helps equipment last longer, so you need fewer replacements.

Who Should Have Access To Your CMMS?

The level of access to a CMMS will depend on the specific needs of your organization and the role of the individual within it. However, in general, the following groups of people should have access to a CMMS:

• Maintenance Personnel: This includes technicians, mechanics and other maintenance staff who are responsible for performing maintenance tasks and updating maintenance records.
• Supervisors and Managers: This includes anyone who’s responsible for overseeing ?maintenance operations, monitoring performance and making decisions related to maintenance activities.
• Finance and Procurement Staff: This includes anyone responsible for managing the financial aspects of maintenance, such as budgeting and purchasing.
• Executive Leadership: This includes senior managers and executives who are responsible for making strategic decisions and aligning maintenance operations with the goals of your organization.
• Users and Customers: In some cases, you may also give customers or end-users limited access to your CMMS to view maintenance schedules, work order status and other relevant information.

It’s important to note that you should provide access to a CMMS on a role-based model. This helps you maintain the security of the system and prevent unauthorized access to sensitive information.

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Next Steps

Effectively maintaining your assets and resources is the primary goal of maintenance management. It helps you optimize your maintenance procedures, making them efficient, cost-effective and fail-safe while still meeting all your service expectations.

The benefits of CMMS are many. Maintenance management software or CMMS can help you streamline maintenance activities and keep all team members on the same page.

Your company’s health depends on the effectiveness of your maintenance procedures. If done properly, it can help you keep expenditures in check, uphold employee safety and increase your assets’ useful life spans.

Are you ready to start searching for a product that matches your requirements. Check out our in-depth comparison report.

How do you implement maintenance management in your facility? Let us know in the comments.