What is CMMS Software?

A Manufacturing Leader’s Guide to Maintenance Tracking and Asset Management

The following article was provided by Celsus Software. Contact Celsus Software at www.celsussoftware.com. You may also contact Wes Jiang at wes@celsussoftware.com.

A CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) is a technological part of a maintenance strategy that works alongside the maintenance culture. It works as a tool to manage departmental events with “Work Orders” and it tracks maintenance across your facility. CMMS solutions give maintenance operations a structured way to organize streamline communication with maintenance tasks, assign responsibility, centralize information, and follow progress from start to finish.

Work order management becomes easier when everything lives in one centralized system instead of being scattered across paper, cabinets, and spreadsheets. For companies running more than one location, a CMMS supports multi-site operations by keeping data uniform and standardized across the company for senior level comparisons and reports, while being centralized, accessible, and consistent no matter where the work is being performed.

Using CMMS and EAM software will help you manage your departments from maintenance and finance department perspectives, from installation to repair to replacement, all while providing a clear picture of long-term equipment costs. Digital CMMS solutions make it easier to:

• Hold your maintenance practice accountable and traceable

• Measure machine issues and failures to increase uptime and find cost savings

• Build a more organized, accountable maintenance program

• Justify equipment upgrades and Capital Expenditures

Should I Use CMMS for My Company?

If your team struggles with any of the issues above, maintenance tracking software is worth considering. Here are three practical reasons to use one:

Auditors and leadership expect fast answers.A CMMS can pull failure histories, parts lists, and safety records in seconds.

Maintaining productive machine uptime requires clean data.Bad-actor reports and MTBF trends give you the evidence to support equipment repairs or replacements.

Depending on tribal knowledge means you could lose important information if someone moves on.As experienced technicians retire, a CMMS keeps maintenance history and PM procedures in one place.

Why Reactive Maintenance Costs More Than You Might Think

Many maintenance teams operate in a “fire-fighting” or “break-fix” mode. They react by moving from failure to failure, instead of assessing each event to prevent them in the first place. This cycle leads to:

• Departmental morale issues

• More downtime

• Higher/unplanned repair costs

• Rush-order part costs

• Uninformed decisions

A proactive approach starts with accurate data. Tracking maintenance and repair cycles in a CMMS generates PMs based on corrective actions which expands your MTBF score. Your team will know where to begin with minimal data entry, done in a simple, organized and accurate way.

Get Real-Time Visibility into Machine Health

You can’t manage what you can’t see. Without trackable data, plant leaders often find out about problems long after the damage is done. Interactive dashboards, charts, and graphs give you a picture of machine health. This visibility also helps you with root cause analysis to find recurring problems.

Digitize Paper Work Orders

Paper work orders and spreadsheets lack the depth and inter-connectedness that is available from computerizing the process. Additionally, they get lost, damaged, pencil-whipped, or lack traceability. These legacy methods make it difficult to search repair history, parts used, and root-cause issues, when you need them.

A digital work order system removes these problems. Every work order is:

• Accurately logged

• Searchable

• Tied to a specific piece of equipment

Everything is easily accounted for, from maintenance tasks, labor, work types, root cause issues, notes, parts used, and more, based on your department’s requirements.

Reduce Unplanned Downtime

Unplanned downtime is one of the most expensive problems on a plant floor. It often happens and repeats itself because of poorly identified root causes, poor scheduling, and/or machines that miss preventive maintenance tasks. One centralized source of truth, such as CMMS software, will help your team find and fix problems before they bring production to a stand-still.

Keeping Preventive Maintenance on Schedule

Preventive Maintenance (PM) only works if it happens on the best maintenance schedule. Manual tracking through spreadsheets or clipboards hanging on a machine makes it easy for a PM to slip past its due date. Additionally, that schedule remains unchallenged despite the increase of production hours, aging equipment, and a PM schedule that hasn’t been influenced by a recent bout of unplanned failures. An automated PM program can schedule PMs for your maintenance department. This keeps your machines up while the teams stay on schedule. In a nutshell, the CMMS system automatically schedules the PMs for you, complete with parts lists, checklists, supporting documents and more.

Track MTBF and Building Asset History

Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) is a key reliability metric, but it’s hard to track accurately without a digital system in place. When a maintenance department is consistent with their maintenance tracking from work orders, an MTBF can be quickly generated and provide failure analysis numbers you can build on.

This data also helps you build a “bad actors” list, which are equipment pieces causing the most downtime and overall headaches. You can use that list, along with MTBF trends, root cause identifiers, and parts costs to build a solid case for repairs or upgrades based on facts instead of feeling.

As the maintenance department develops its work flow, and accurately tracks work orders, those records become maintenance history trends that include the following for your team:

• Parts tracking

• Labor tracking

• Failure tracking

• Notes

Instead of relying on tribal knowledge, the centralized repository that is your CMMS allows anyone to look up past repairs and understand recurring problems in a much faster way.

Support Technicians with Mobile App Access

Technicians spend most of their time on the floor. Mobile app access allows them to adopt a more streamlined communication process by receiving alerts and reviewing the work needed to be performed. Closing out work orders from wherever they’re working, gives them the tools to create a digital version of the physical they’ve performed inside the CMMS. Additionally, field techs can stay connected through tablets, laptops, and an internet connect without needing to walk back to their work station.

Manage Parts, ERP Integration, and Compliance

CMMS software solves a few other challenges in the maintenance tracking picture:

Parts and inventory

Tying parts consumption to the specific machine event or alarm that triggered a repair gives you a clearer picture of true maintenance costs.

ERP and MES integration

Data silos between production and maintenance systems slow everyone down. Open API integration with MES/ERP systems, and direct integration with platforms like SAP, Oracle, JD Edwards, PeopleSoft, and Infor SyteLine, connects your maintenance data to the rest of your business.

Depending on tribal knowledge

Automated daily, weekly, and monthly reports, sorted by machine, department, or shift, can give each shift lead a data-backed foundation that supports the handoff meetings between shifts.

Compliance and audits

Auditors often ask for specific failure histories, parts records, or safety documentation on short notice. A documented audit trail of machine repairs, PMs and other completed work orders gives you defensible records when inspectors come asking.

Important CMMS Terms to Know

CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System): Software that tracks equipment, work orders, preventive maintenance, and parts inventory in one system. It replaces paper records and spreadsheets with a single, searchable source of maintenance data.

MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures): A measure of how long a piece of equipment runs, on average, between breakdowns. A higher MTBF means the equipment is more reliable.

MTTR (Mean Time to Repair): The average time it takes to fix a piece of equipment after it fails. A lower MTTR means your team gets machines back up and running faster.

PM (Preventive Maintenance): Scheduled maintenance work done to prevent equipment failure, rather than fixing equipment after it breaks. PMs are generally based on calendar frequency, usage, or meter count and can be influenced by the MTBF.

MRO (Materials, Repair, and Operations): The parts, tools, and supplies needed to keep equipment running. MRO inventory includes spare parts, lubricants, and other maintenance supplies.

OEE (Overall Equipment Efficiency): A measure of how well a piece of equipment is used compared to its full potential. It accounts for availability, performance, and quality.

Bad Actors: The pieces of equipment causing the most downtime or repair costs in a facility. Identifying bad actors helps teams prioritize repairs or replacements.

Work Order: A maintenance event record that documents a specific maintenance related task, including:

• What the event is about, and what needs to be done

• What was performed, and who is assigned to do it

• How it was left and/or its current status

Asset History: A complete record of everything that has happened to a piece of equipment, including repairs, parts used, and past failures. Asset history helps technicians diagnose recurring problems.

Audit Trail: A traceable documented record of maintenance activity, including alerts, work orders, and completed repairs. Audit trails support compliance reviews and inspections.