CMMS — Computerized Maintenance Management System — definition

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CMMS is the acronym for Com­put­er­ized Main­te­nance Man­age­ment Sys­tem. It is a soft­ware-assist­ed man­age­ment method for a com­pa­ny’s main­te­nance depart­ments. Main­te­nance cov­ers all the oper­a­tions of upkeep of a tech­ni­cal equipment.

The indus­tri­al CMMS concerns :

• pre­ven­tive maintenance
• con­di­tion­al maintenance
• cor­rec­tive maintenance

What is the purpose of CMMS?

One of the pri­ma­ry func­tions of CMMS is to pro­vide auto­mat­ed assis­tance to the man­age­ment of main­te­nance in a com­pa­ny, in the fol­low­ing areas 

• pro­duc­tion,
• the oper­a­tion of the equipment,
• finan­cial man­age­ment ser­vices. For exam­ple: man­age­ment of fleet renew­al (cars, machines…) and main­te­nance contracts…

Why implement a CMMS — Computerized Maintenance Management System?

Improp­er main­te­nance can result in costs relat­ed to:

• unplanned down­time,
• high repair times,
• over­stock­ing or unavail­abil­i­ty of spare parts,
• a lack of infor­ma­tion on costs and repair activities.

On the oth­er hand, effi­cient main­te­nance will be a source of prof­it.

It will improve the short- and long-term prof­itabil­i­ty of the com­pa­ny’s facil­i­ties and pro­duc­tion per­for­mance.

What are the functionalities of a CMMS?

A CMMS aims to assist the main­te­nance depart­ments of com­pa­nies in their mis­sions. Thus, the func­tion­al­i­ties of a CMMS cov­er most of the time :

• equip­ment man­age­ment: equip­ment inven­to­ry, loca­tion, man­age­ment of ded­i­cat­ed infor­ma­tion by type of equip­ment: pro­duc­tion, build­ings, machines, vehi­cles, net­works, com­put­ers, etc.
• main­te­nance man­age­ment: cor­rec­tive (work orders or main­te­nance orders) but also man­age­ment of inter­ven­tion requests to report an anom­aly tak­en into account by maintenance
• man­age­ment of the safe­ty instal­la­tions for main­te­nance work: con­sign­ment, cen­tral­iza­tion, safe­ty autho­riza­tion, decon­sign­ment, etc., allow­ing opti­mal lock­ing of an instal­la­tion dur­ing main­te­nance operations
• inven­to­ry man­age­ment: stores and ware­hous­es, min­i­mum and max­i­mum quan­ti­ties, replen­ish­ment, stock con­trol, ABC analy­sispick­ing list, ref­er­enc­ing and search, spare parts, sup­pli­er cat­a­log, etc.
• Pur­chas­ing man­age­ment: spare parts or ser­vices (sub­con­tract­ing, fixed price or direct labour), quo­ta­tion cycles, pur­chase requests, orders/receipts and sup­pli­er returns, invoic­ing, etc.
• per­son­nel and sched­ule man­age­ment: activ­i­ties, jobs, work­load plan­ning, fore­cast­ing, time­keep­ing, etc.
• Cost and bud­get man­age­ment: labor, inven­to­ry, pur­chas­ing, equip­ment rental, bud­get prepa­ra­tion, peri­od­ic mon­i­tor­ing, vari­ance reports, etc.

CMMS also haveper­for­mance indicators/KPIs. A steer­ing cock­pit and dash­boards allow ded­i­cat­ed depart­ments to man­age main­te­nance activ­i­ty, alerts, etc.

From CMMS to Enterprise Asset Management

The CMMS is often the only appli­ca­tion in the com­pa­ny that “archives” the com­plete and tech­ni­cal descrip­tion of all its equipment.

Thus, some CMMS have devel­oped func­tion­al­i­ties based on this knowl­edge of equip­ment, beyond pure main­te­nance processes.

We note, for exam­ple, the mon­i­tor­ing of cer­tain regulations:

• the stan­dard ATEX in the indus­try which reg­u­lates at Euro­pean lev­el the pro­tec­tion of work­ers in poten­tial­ly dan­ger­ous areas,
• tech­ni­cal con­trol of vehicles,
• mate­r­i­al-vig­i­lance in hos­pi­tals and health­care insti­tu­tions, which man­ages the mon­i­tor­ing of inci­dents or risks of inci­dents involv­ing a med­ical device

And also, the man­age­ment of cer­tain busi­ness process­es relat­ed to equipment:

• mon­i­tor­ing of con­sump­tion in transport,
• the man­age­ment of plans in the building, …

Adding those func­tion­al­i­ties pushed CMMS edi­tors to devel­op EAM soft­ware — Enter­prise Asset Management.

These EAM solu­tions com­bine sys­tems, ser­vices and soft­ware to monitor/track assets and equip­ment that can be used well beyond the main­te­nance department.

 

 

 

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