The word ‘planning’ has a great significance in our day to day life. It helps us priorities our task and plan goals in a more organized and realistic manner. Businesses also work on intensive planning, where they plan out their activities in advance and then channelize them to achieve the desired results. The maintenance section in any manufacturing unit also operates in this similar fashion. The production team makes future decisions and the execution team follows then. As such planning is considered as a systematic way of achieving things in a purposeful manner.
Although planning has always been a part of our system, yet what has changed is the method of planning. Today with the advent of technology, planning has become automated. For proper maintenance of all expensive technology devices and equipment, facility managers need a more systematic way to plan the maintenance of their assets.
Thus in order to address these maintenance and management related challenges, manufacturers are deploying the Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). Research has proved that CMMS can reduce the cost of maintenance by more than 50% and can also help manufacturers to maintain their data, channelize their operations, track and record maintenance and most importantly bring about coordination and transparency between different departments.
The shift from reactive maintenance to preventive maintenance is gradually happening. But to sustain the future challenges, the CMMS developers need to constantly upgrade their software and make it more future-ready.
Let’s look at some of the areas, where CMMS can work to address the growing needs of the manufacturing sector.
CMMS Mobile Application
CMMS companies need to adapt the mobile platform which is more user-friendly, easy to manage and easy to handle. With the help of CMMS mobile application, facility managers can get real time information about the scheduled maintenance activities. Therefore the need of being physically around is ruled out. Managers can access and carry out their work remotely without affecting the normal flow of activities. In short, the CMMS mobile application can be a revolutionary step for the CMMS software industry.
Innovation
For any industry, innovation is the key. CMMS software also need to reinvent their functionalities to suit the changing nature of business. For example, there could be an alarm system incorporated in the software, which indicates an urgent maintenance need for an equipment. This feature could be a great boon, especially for the manufacturing sector.
Inventory management and Wastage control
For a manufacturing unit, equipment and material are two most important elements that are major cost determinant. Research proves that companies usually lose a great amount of money on material over-stocking or under stocking, this problem area should be addressed in the CMMS. The CMMS can build a more effective inventory management functionality, where all the available stock and the replenished stock details are properly maintained. Facility managers can just check the system to find out the stock status and only order what is required.
Conclusion
The above areas are the prime concern for any manufacturing unit, so the CMMS software developers need to understand the challenges that are prevalent in this sector and create innovate solutions to resolve them. At the end of the day CMMS developers should aim to create a product that can make maintenance tasks easier and effective.
Guide created by S. Himmelstein & Company a leading manufacturer of torque tranducers