If you haven’t already, now is the perfect time to set maintenance resolutions for the New Year. Setting maintenance resolutions involves determining what worked and what didn’t work last year in order to fine-tune your maintenance operations. We’ve laid out some maintenance resolutions that recommended to help you get the most out of your maintenance software and assets.
Maintenance Resolutions to Maximize Your CMMS:
Make Sure Work Orders Are Completed in Detail
Conduct a CMMS audit to ensure that work orders have been completed in detail and historical information is available for analysis. This involves going into your work order history to evaluate whether meaningful information has been entered into work orders. Complete historical data is essential to making smart maintenance decisions and enables maintenance planners to accurately estimate the duration and costs of maintenance work.
Eliminate Manual Processes
Automate any tasks that require the use of spreadsheets or worse, pen and paper. Preventive maintenance software makes it possible to do away with manual processes once and for all.
Create a Plan
In order to have a successful 2014, it’s crucial that you put together a plan and set goals for the year ahead. You can set monthly, quarterly, and annual goals to keep your maintenance department on track throughout the year. Your plan may include goals like reducing excess inventory, prioritizing assets by risk, and lowering asset maintenance costs, to name a few examples.
Track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
After setting goals, monitor your progress by establishing and tracking KPIs to measure the performance of your maintenance department. Some KPIs that may be important to your maintenance department include preventive maintenance schedule compliance, unplanned maintenance, and top ten assets by costs.
Increase the Mobility of Maintenance Staff
Make it easier for technicians to complete maintenance tasks while on the move by investing in mobile maintenance software that is accessible via handheld mobile devices. Mobile maintenance software gives maintenance technicians the ability to access information about assets and repairs, create work orders and work requests, record inventory received, enter details about work performed, and record readings, all without having to return to a desk. Mobile maintenance solutions also increase productivity and efficiency by updating your maintenance software with real-time data, increasing data accuracy, and reducing travel time.
Retain Professional Knowledge
Considering the fact that many maintenance staff members are approaching retirement age and the industry often struggles to attract young, highly skilled workers, it’s crucial to take steps to retain professional knowledge. Use your CMMS to record all maintenance activity and procedures. Detailed historical data will help you effectively manage labor transitions when key maintenance staff retires.
Invest in Maintenance Software Training
People ultimately run your CMMS, which is why it’s important to train your employees to use the software properly. Initial training helps to get the system up and running, and recurring training can be provided when upgrades are introduced. Investing in maintenance software training is crucial because it leads to a higher user adoption rate, and strong user adoption is key to the success of any software. Comprehensive training also increases efficiency, leads to the better use of features, and minimizes errors.
Get Outside Help
Get the year off to a good start by hiring a preventive maintenance software consultant to help you achieve your maintenance goals and configure your maintenance software to support them. A consultant can help you increase your return on investment through more effective use of your maintenance software.
Want to make 2014 the best year yet for your maintenance department? Sign up for a free trial of DPSI’s maintenance software and explore the consulting services that we offer.
