In the digital age, manufacturing organizations are turning to and adopting CMMS/EAM platforms more than ever. The need to be intentional and proactive with the work that is being done has never been more important or impactful to an organization’s bottom line, and thus manufacturing companies are finding sustained success with the implementation of three key CMMS/EAM strategies.

The following strategies, shared by Adam O'Brien of Maintenance Connection and also reflected in the 2017 State of CMMS research report, are designed to provide any company that uses a modern CMMS/EAM platform with the building blocks necessary to take their maintenance standards to the next level of productivity and profitability. With a focus on automation and mobility, manufacturing organizations that deploy the following strategies have found them to be a vital asset, saving them an average of $100,000.

·         Be Proactive, Not Reactive: Most manufacturing organizations are dealing with reactive work on the manufacturing floor—up to 50 percent on average, according to the report. This leads to a disparate downtime ratio that drains resources and ultimately affects an organization’s ability to stay profitable.

By intentionally implementing a proactive work schedule that includes preconfigured processes, instructional documentation and automatic request generation within your CMMS/EAM platform, you can decrease the amount of labor time spent on reactive work and focus on ensuring that you achieve increased labor productivity and maximum asset uptime.

If the “how” of the preventive strategies doesn’t grab you, maybe the results will. Manufacturing organizations that leverage proactive work schedules with elements of the strategies above find that they save, on average, tens of thousands of dollars, with top performing manufacturing organizations saving as much as $1 million.

·         Be Mobile: Today’s mobile technologies have blurred the lines between modern mobile devices and their traditional, stationary desktop counterparts. With functionality and performance no longer being relegated to traditional desktops, the time has never been better to utilize mobile devices to increase productivity, enhance data and reporting accuracy, and ultimately deliver greater gains to your organization’s bottom line.

By utilizing responsive, HTML5-optimized mobile CMMS/EAM platforms, higher functioning manufacturing organizations are finding sustainable success by sending their field technicians into the field with smart phones and tablets. By focusing on completing tasks and procedures as the work occurs, these organizations are eliminating the chance of inaccurate data, maximizing labor productivity and ensuring that assets maintain an elevated uptime percentage.

·         Integrate Your Inventory: Manufacturing organizations that have a CMMS/EAM platform that allows for the integration of their inventory with their assets are, on average, are 70 percent more likely to find a direct correlation of inventory/part adoption and CMMS/EAM success than those that don’t implement inventory into the daily CMMS/EAMs software.

By leveraging automated data import strategies from the start, manufacturing organizations can ensure that their stock counts and ordering process are streamlined, while also providing their workforce with the information they need to accurately assess and repair downed assets.

Although the initial investment to ensure that all inventory is properly added to your CMMS/EAM platform may seem daunting, organizations that do make the investment find they save $10,000 to $100,000 and experience elevated inventory accuracy, decreased ordering time and a dramatic drop in lost or misplaced inventory due to inaccurate cycle counts and incorrect storage locations.                                                                       

From Conception to Implementation

The above strategies can seem daunting and overwhelming at first glance, but breaking them down into strategic, focused rollouts can help to reduce the apprehension. By focusing on the strategies that have the highest impact for your organization and then working down the list, you can ensure that you are implementing the processes that provide the highest immediate results and that your organization sees the returns at an increased pace.

Here’s an example of how you can rollout the above strategies in phases:

·         Months 1-3: Plan, create and implement a set of proactive work schedules that include detailed procedures, referential documentation and a clear automation schedule

·         Months 4-6: Test and implement a mobile platform that complements your main CMMS/EAM platform. Key items to focus on are mobile device compatibility, technician adoption via a clear and easy-to-use interface and the ability provide technicians with the information that they need to complete their field work as thoroughly and accurately as possible.

·         Months 6-12: Research, create, test and implement an inventory integration with your existing CMMS/EAM application. This includes the mapping of key fields and data points, along with establishing your organizational standards for processes, compliance and sync intervals.

The Results Justify the Work

At the end of the day, we are all looking for ways to improve our organizational processes with the aim of providing maximum results for organizational goals and key performance indicators. By scaling the implementation process to fit your organization’s unique needs, you can ensure that the changes that are being made are embraced and adopted by key organizational stakeholders and field technicians alike.