Understanding New Technology

As the manufacturing world becomes more and more automated, companies have an urgent need for efficient and timely equipment maintenance. Even if your business isn't employing advanced robots yet, there are still many reasons you need a computerized maintenance management system, or CMMS. This type of software has been proving itself useful for decades and with the advent of more complex technologies, constantly integrating with people, CMMS is more valuable than ever.

1. Protecting Your People From Industrial Accidents

With computerized maintenance management software, you always know the status of all your equipment, including repairs, inspections and real time reporting and this helps to keep your people safer when it comes to industrial mishaps. Most especially if your employees are working in close proximity to heavy and potentially dangerous robots and other machines, you need to know that equipment isn't on the verge of a breakdown or being held together by some temporary fix; but rather, that it's meeting your highest standards of safety. CMMS show you exactly what's going on with all of your equipment, machines and more, leaving less to chance or mechanical failure.

2. Increasing Your Company's Productivity

Because CMMS software solutions increase the efficiency of your entire operation, your entire company becomes more productive. You can plan work around scheduled repairs when they're needed and know that your production line won't be clogged by the constant unpredictable nature of poorly-maintained machines.

3. Creating A More Efficient Flow For Work Orders

When you have an order to fulfill, taking care of it in a timely manner means you're going to have a satisfied customer and very likely, one that will order with you again. When your facility functions like a well-oiled machine, you can fulfill orders on schedule and accurately predict your company's capacity to generate the next batch of products, leading to even greater efficiency and higher profits.

4. Taking Total Control Of Inventory

Loss prevention, inventory awareness and making use of in-house inventory are all ways to save you time and money, but you already know that if your maintenance crews can never find the parts they need or don't have a good inventory management system in place. CMMS keeps every aspect of your maintenance department in check, at all times.

5. Lowering Your Cost Of Repairs

If your people know where to find the parts they need and those parts are automatically re-ordered when used, they won't be left idle when waiting for them to come in again. Creating a more efficient maintenance operation lowers the cost of repairs in many ways, particularly if those repairs are tied to your real time productivity.

6. Minimizing Downtime On Your Lines

How much money does your company lose when a line is down? How long does it usually take to get that line back up again? Leverage resources, such as CMMS, to control the maintenance environment, directly correlates with minimizing downtime.

7. Organizing Your Real Time And Historical Data

CMMS software solutions also include the ability to produce reports of all kinds, from your past production quotas to future predictions and other pertinent data, which you can distribute to the people making decisions in different departments or to potential investors. Once you're familiar with the CMMS running in your company, you can generate data relative to any area of production, ordering, fulfillment, costs, repairs and so forth, giving you total command of the indicators from the past, present and way into the future.

8. Decreasing Labor Hours Due To Maintenance Emergencies

If your maintenance is running smoothly, you should experience fewer emergency repair situations, which most likely contribute to overtime from your workforce. While no CMMS can guarantee a trouble-free facility, it can create order out of the traditional chaos of machines breaking, being repaired and breaking down repeatedly, a scenario that costs businesses both large and small, considerably.

9. Limiting Paperwork And Paper Waste

If your current maintenance department runs on hand-written work orders, you're likely wasting more paper, time and money than you care to think about. Computerize the entire department and create a neatly organized, legible means of distributing your resources to the necessary repairs and upkeep.

10. Keeping Your Company Up With Industry Standards And Safety Inspections

A solid software system backing up your maintenance division means you're up to date with industry standards, manufacturing updates and as an added benefit, you're going to be more prepared for safety inspections. All of this reduces the burden of work on your people, thereby increasing their productivity capacity, all the while lowering their levels of stress and likely, yours as well. Since a stressed-out employee doesn't usually function at peak performance, when you lessen their worry load, your entire company benefits.

Whether your company is utilizing advanced robots or employing a human population, you need to keep track and control of maintenance, every second of every day. To do otherwise leaves your company vulnerable to many failures and hazards that can otherwise be easily avoided, with the proper implementation of an effective CMMS.