By Keith Craig, Better Buys
Understanding CMMS
Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) streamline equipment maintenance and facility operations.
CMMS automates asset management, allowing businesses to manage work orders, inventory, and maintenance schedules effectively. It provides real-time insights into maintenance needs, helping you make faster, better decisions.
CMMS software generates work order schedules, inventory forecasts, and other reports, giving you immediate access to critical information. By reviewing this data, you can modify preventive maintenance plans to improve efficiency and reduce costs. With CMMS, facilities managers can track, monitor, and predict when assets need maintenance, ultimately reducing costs and increasing profits. CMMS also helps with regulatory compliance, safety management, inventory control, and overall asset management.
Why Go Mobile with CMMS?
Going mobile with CMMS means taking maintenance management wherever you go. In the past, CMMS lacked mobility, even as other business solutions embraced smartphone technology. Now, you can view CMMS dashboards on tablets and smartphones, making it a game-changer for facilities management.
Multitasking maintenance duties often require technicians to move both inside and outside the facility. Mobility lets them access CMMS from anywhere—in a facility, in the field, or on the go. This flexibility makes mobile CMMS an obvious fit for modern maintenance needs.
Wherever technicians are, they can access equipment maintenance history, request parts, complete work orders, and generate reports—all from a handheld device. Immediate data availability significantly increases wrench time. Technicians spend less time at a terminal inputting task statuses, leading to more efficient operations. Mobile CMMS also boosts inventory accuracy by providing real-time access to work orders and recording signals from condition monitoring tools and asset inspections via NFC technology.
The Popularity of Mobile CMMS
Mobility has become essential for CMMS applications. In a recent facilities management poll, 64.2 percent of respondents said they would embrace mobile devices at their facility. Once adopted, mobile CMMS should be fully deployed. Studies show that maintenance efficiency and cost reduction improve when maintenance staff use mobile devices and digital workflow software.
The six maintenance functions that mobile CMMS improves most are work instruction distribution, maintenance planning and scheduling, general reporting, route management, system alerts, and repairs.
Benefits of Going Mobile with CMMS
Going mobile with CMMS enhances these functions through three key advantages: image transmission, paperwork reduction, and simplified data entry.
1. Image Transmission
Mobile CMMS allows technicians to capture and attach photos, videos, and audio files to work orders. This visual documentation speeds up repairs, reduces downtime, and improves accuracy. Technicians can record or retrieve multimedia in seconds, vividly supplementing reports and ensuring more effective repairs. The result? Less downtime and a quicker return to normal production levels.
2. Paperwork Reduction
Mobile CMMS fosters paperless operations. Technicians can store, retrieve, and distribute work orders, maintenance schedules, supply requests, and more as they make their rounds. Going paperless eliminates the need for printers and storage space for paperwork. Files saved to disk and retrieved through CMMS reduce the time and staff needed for hardcopy management, freeing up staff to focus on more constructive duties.
3. Simplified Data Entry
Mobile CMMS simplifies data entry with barcode scanning. Technicians gain immediate, real-time access to critical equipment data, work orders, maintenance history, photos, manuals, and more. Barcode scanning streamlines work order submission, equipment detail input, and asset repair. It eliminates the need to search databases with keywords, reducing errors and speeding up tasks. Scan the barcode, and the resource appears on the screen—fast, simple, and effective.
Mobile CMMS can also read QR codes on failing machines. Combine this with a keyword search, and it presents a solution for any maintenance issue, backed by relevant documentation. This real-time data entry reduces errors, clarifies misunderstandings, and speeds up issue resolution.
Boost Your Bottom Line with Mobile CMMS
Going mobile with CMMS saves time, reduces effort, and cuts costs. With the ability to supplement work and parts orders with images on the go, eliminate paperwork, and minimize input errors, mobile CMMS leads to accurate, real-time equipment repair. These improvements deliver a steady boost to your bottom line.
