Month: December 2020

While some maintenance departments rely on a run-to-failure strategy, most want to do more preventive than corrective maintenance. The problem is that many organizations don’t have the resources to expand their maintenance plan to include work that extends asset life and minimizes downtime. A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) can help them do just that—but more about CMMS software later. While it is certainly the job of the maintenance department to take on a break-and-fix role, there should be a balance between this (corrective maintenance) and preventive maintenance work.

Key maintenance management objectives can reduce reliance on corrective maintenance and contribute to a more efficient and effective maintenance program. We alluded to some of these objectives in our blog post, What is Maintenance Management? Here, we will discuss eight maintenance management functions and objectives in more detail.

Objectives of Maintenance Management

1. Control Costs and Budget

The first objective to share with you is cost control and budgeting. The maintenance manager allocates the budget he is given to various areas of the department’s resources to ensure everything works effectively. It’s important to include funds for both planned and emergency or corrective maintenance in the budget.

The thing to keep in mind when budgeting for maintenance work is that when a major asset breaks down completely, most likely the asset will be replaced no matter the cost. Of course, a decision must be made between repairing the asset, replacing it, or purchasing a different type of machine. Maintenance managers are tasked with staying within the maintenance budget. However, when something like this happens, it justifies a maintenance budget overrun. They must make cost-effective, wise decisions when choosing parts, vendors, and new or replacement machines. They also need to balance the costs and benefits of preventive vs. corrective maintenance.

Labor resources are another area in which costs need to be monitored closely. When the budget allows, maintenance departments might outsource work to save time. In many cases, however, this is not feasible and corners get cut or tasks get delayed.

When there isn’t enough time to complete all of the necessary corrective maintenance, there is no realistic way to implement a preventive maintenance program on top of what the team is already doing. For many organizations, they can implement this type of program only when they have the upfront resources and money available to invest in it. However, after they overcome that hurdle, the payback from this investment will come over time.

2. Comply with Regulations

There are different types of regulations to follow, which vary by industry. Organizations in the oil and gas industry must follow FERC and EPA regulations, in addition to OSHA regulations. There are many safety regulations that must be followed by the food and beverage industry, such as those advised by the FDA. Local, state, and federal regulation compliance standards must be considered by the production team at all times.

To maintain adherence to these regulations, it’s important to make small plans that lead to accomplishing bigger compliance goals. Examples of these plans include:

•  Making sure there are adequate safety guards in place on all machines
•  Inspecting assets for damage
•  Having a system in place to report damage to assets and parts
• Documenting and reporting on all repairs and replacements

3. Plan Maintenance Work

Strategic maintenance management includes scheduling maintenance jobs ahead of time. This is important because it efficiently distributes the appropriate time and labor resources to proactive, preventive maintenance tasks, helping maintenance departments reduce the frequency major asset failures. Maintenance managers must have a clear understanding of the structure of the company in order to schedule work effectively. It will help determine the priority of various jobs.

For example, if a technician is working on installing new shelves in the stockroom and a pipe bursts in a bathroom, that is an emergency in which he may need stop what’s doing and help to make that repair, unless another technician is available. There are other scenarios in which the job prioritization is less obvious, but an experienced maintenance manager should help make those calls each day. The truck needs to be in service to make sure deliveries of that product are made on schedule. If just a few tasks are prioritized incorrectly, the schedule can be thrown off for weeks. Maintenance work must be organized in a way that achieves optimal outcomes.

4. Ensure Personnel Safety

Another objective of maintenance management is ensuring the safety of all personnel, inside and outside of the maintenance department. This is done through regular inspections of boilers, compressors, material handling equipment, and other assets that could become dangerous if they malfunction. When maintenance is properly managed, safety increases for everyone in the organization. Many machines can be dangerous when operating normally, but even more so when it malfunctions. Proper training on the function of every asset, critical safety dos and don’ts, and emergency situation protocols are essential.

Facility management-related health and safety guidelines are also important. Just a few examples include:

• Sanitation and janitorial services
• Pest control
• Waste management
• Managing HVAC, electrical, and plumbing work

5. Minimize Equipment Failure and Production Downtime

Maintenance teams strive to maximize equipment availability, and they are better able to do so when preventive maintenance jobs are managed well. Maintenance technicians must be able to stay on top of preventive maintenance to keep machines running so that failure and production interruptions are minimized. At the same time, downtime cannot be avoided entirely, so when machines do need repairs, they must be done quickly and efficiently.

Read More About Minimizing Downtime

6. Extend Useful Machine Life

When maintenance tasks are properly delegated, prioritized, and completed quickly, machines last longer. Over time a good maintenance plan improves reliability, availability, and maintainability. This is done through proactive maintenance work, which can include preventive, predictive, and condition-based maintenance. Preventive maintenance includes minor maintenance jobs and inspections to prevent asset breakdowns. Predictive maintenance uses real-time asset data collected though sensors, along with historical performance data and advanced analytics to predict when failure will occur. Condition-based maintenance uses real-time data to identify when an asset’s performance or condition reaches an unsatisfactory level.

7. Improve Product Quality

When machines are better maintained, the result is improved product quality and a decrease in the number or products that need to be scrapped or reworked. Improved product quality leads to better reviews of your product and in turn, more satisfied customers and in turn, more sales.

8. Develop Improved Policies, Procedures, and Standards

A final maintenance management objective included in this article is to continually develop and improve upon policies, procedures, and standards that lead to better maintained equipment and cost reduction. In order for this to be successful, there must be a mutual understanding between maintenance and other departments to plan, control, and direct maintenance activities. This includes procedures such as knowing how to report maintenance issues to the maintenance team, what system to use to communicate the production and maintenance schedules, and how others will be notified of asset repair status.

How FTMaintenance Helps You Meet Your Objectives

Cost Tracking

Strategic maintenance management requires smart budgeting. CMMS software enables you to budget for maintenance more accurately. FTMaintenance software can help track maintenance costs by tracking the costs of maintenance work and MRO inventory purchases. The software gives you the ability to drill into all levels of data. This includes specific assets and repair costs associated with them, such as supplies, parts, and labor. These cost factors can be used to make informed budgeting decisions.

With all of this information at your fingertips through maintenance reports and graphs, you can even use this information as a vendor negotiating tool. FTMaintenance reports can be used to view equipment cost history, inventory cost history, work order cost history, and YTD (year to date) and LTD (life to date) equipment cost history. The software also has cost center functionality for more specific cost tracking.

Preventive Maintenance Scheduling

One of the most important features of maintenance management software is preventive maintenance. FTMaintenance allows you to create a preventive maintenance program, scheduling tasks at any time and interval needed. It can be challenging for maintenance teams who have never had a preventive maintenance program in place to fully implement it all at once. With FTMaintenance Select, you can roll out the software at a pace that works best for you, with ongoing support from us along the way.

Safety, Minimizing Downtime, and Improving Maintenance Procedures

FTMaintenance helps you to keep up with safety standards through preventive maintenance scheduling, automatic work order activation, and notifications via email so you can stay on top of inspections. It can also be used to ensure communication of safety protocols on all work orders. FTMaintenance improves documentation of the fact that safety protocols were followed.

By using CMMS software as part of your daily maintenance routine, you will minimize equipment downtime and interruptions in production. Less downtime and smoother production leads to greater production value and better product quality. Finally, the daily use of CMMS software such as FTMaintenance can be incorporated into your maintenance procedures to improve organization of your maintenance process.

Curious to know more? Schedule a demo of FTMaintenance today.

The work order management process can be inefficient or ineffective in many ways. Processing, prioritizing, and tracking incoming work orders require a lot of effort from maintenance staff. When you receive requests for maintenance from multiple sources, (emails, phone calls, instant messages, and in-person contacts) it can be difficult to organize them all.

Establishing streamlined work order process best practices ensures the maintenance team will get preventive maintenance and maintenance jobs derived from requests done efficiently. Here, we will talk about the work order process and things you can do to improve it.

The Work Order Process

Surprisingly, many organizations do not have a formal work order process or system in place to manage work orders. Work order process best practices are centered on organized communication and consistency in how maintenance jobs are carried out. Let’s walk through the importance of a CMMS work order, a typical work order process, and some best practices you can implement along the way.

Create the Work Order Request

Work order management starts with creating the work order request. This request can be made by a maintenance technician or maintenance manager. Most often, however, it is made by someone outside of the maintenance department using a maintenance request portal, which provides a standard channel for submitting requests for maintenance work.

Best Practice: Submit maintenance requests formally. No work orders should be created for requested jobs unless the maintenance request is formally submitted. Everyone who uses the system should know how to submit adequate, useful information. In computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software, a designated system administrator can specify all mandatory information that is required before a maintenance request can be accepted. If it is a maintenance technician or manager submitting the request, they may have the authority to expedite approval. This step will vary by organization.

Approve the Work Order Request

Once the request for maintenance is submitted, it needs to be approved or rejected by the individuals with the authority to approve them, including maintenance managers, executives, or plant operations managers. In order for a maintenance request to be approved, it needs to contain the proper information. At minimum, a work order should include which building or asset requires maintenance and a description of the problem or service that needs to be addressed.

Best Practice: Designate certain staff members as approvers. There should be specific staff members that have permissions in the software to approve work orders. They will have the job of ensuring that only valid requests with enough information go through to the maintenance team. The approval team must also consider whether or not the asset is worth repairing again after the most recent failure. If not, production can be moved to another machine, or the machine could be replaced or discarded.

After all of these factors have been determined, requests that still need to be done become work orders. This process helps to avoid bogging down the system with incomplete requests and confusing the maintenance technicians.

Develop the Work Order

Once a work order has been approved, the maintenance manager or maintenance planner needs to fully develop and determine the importance of the work order. This includes researching past asset failures to see if this problem has occurred before. It also involves gathering the necessary repair manuals and documentation, which can be scanned in and digitally attached to the work order. Finally, the repair’s maintenance tasks and process needs to be laid out for the technician or team of technicians who will complete the work order.

Best Practice: Make sure the work order information is comprehensive before including it in the schedule. Review all of the fields and be sure they are filled out completely and accurately. If any information is unclear, ask for clarification from the person who submitted the work order. Consider what documentation or materials need to be attached to work order to alleviate delays in completing the work order. Finally, consider the current maintenance workload and severity of the maintenance need detailed in the work order when prioritizing it.

Prioritize the Work Order

The next step in the work order management process is to prioritize the work and identify the different work order types for each request. This includes who will address each job. Will the job be assigned to the next available technician, or will it be reserved for someone with a particular set of skills?

Best Practice: Establish and follow prioritization guidelines. A maintenance manager should set and follow an established set of guidelines to make informed decisions about what priority each work order should have: emergency, high, safety, medium, or low. These are common priorities given to work orders.

• Emergency—stop everything else to do now: fire alarm goes off, gas leak, plumbing overflow, total power loss, etc.
• High—finish what you’re working on, then do: broken lock, HVAC outage, broken elevator, or critical preventive maintenance tasks, such as replacing power rods in a nuclear plant
• Safety—higher than medium priority: slip and fall hazards, sharp edges
• Medium—more important than low priority tasks, but not safety issues: broken exterior door, partial power loss, minor leaks, flat tire on infrequently used equipment
• Low—operations can go on as usual without this task being done: painting a wall, installing a new shelf in the stockroom, or lubricating a door hinge that squeaks
• Scheduled—planned well in advance: contract work, non-critical preventive maintenance, and seasonal jobs

Schedule the Work Order

If approved, the maintenance manager or the designated scheduler then schedules the work order. He can do this through a printed calendar, email calendar software, scheduling management tools, or CMMS software. Scheduling can be done on virtually any basis needed from a one-time job to daily, weekly, monthly, or annually.

Best Practice: Think about priority, frequency, and distribution when scheduling. Consider the priority of the work order, whether or not this type of job will be a reoccurring one, and if scheduled in CMMS software, determine what other forms of distribution or follow up you should use (email, printed sheet, calendar reminder, etc).

Assign the Work Order

Once the priority of the job has been determined, the next step is to assign the work order to one or more technicians with the appropriate expertise to effectively solve the problem with the asset, or perform preventive maintenance. The maintenance manager also needs to take into consideration an efficient distribution of workload for his team.

Best Practice: Fill in the gaps left by requesters when necessary. When a valid maintenance request is approved to become a work order, the requester only knows so much about the asset and job in question. It is a good idea for the approvers, including maintenance managers, to fill in any missing information. The most complete work order:

• Specifies the asset or building that needs work
• Describes the problem or service needed
• Specifies parts and tools required
• Contains a task checklist
• Includes associated documents (if applicable)
• Includes notes as needed

Complete and Close the Work Order

Once the work order has been assigned and scheduled, the next step in work order management is to complete the work and close the work order. Of course, the time it takes to complete the tasks outlined in the work order depend greatly on the complexity of the job, expected duration, availability of the asset, and how to best avoid interrupting production if possible.

Closing the work order is done differently depending on the type of work order system in place. With manual work orders, “closing” them might be as simple as putting a folder in a filing cabinet. If an email system is used, you may change the status from flagged to follow up to complete (usually displayed with a checkmark symbol next to the message) and move the email message to a folder for completed work orders.

When using CMMS software to manage work orders, you go through a few quick digital steps to close the work order. Closed work orders then become part of work order history, which anyone with access permission can view.

Best Practice: Document everything. One of the most important work order best practices is to document everything. This can be done throughout the work order management process, but it is especially important before work order closure after the work has been completed.

While it may seem tedious for smaller jobs, the more details you document, the more comprehensive your work order history will be. This history can later be analyzed more closely in reports. Make sure parts and labor hours are included on the work order. A CMMS can assist with maintaining this best practice through its required fields in the work order form.

Summarizing CMMS Work Order Functionality

The main purpose of CMMS software is to manage work orders. CMMS software offers the most comprehensive features for implementing your work order process best practices. From work order management to asset management, inventory management, and maintenance reports, there are many tools to make your maintenance work as efficient as possible.

Read More: How CMMS Software Drives Maintenance Efficiency

It’s important to fully understand work order functionality in CMMS software. Here are just some CMMS capabilities.

• Categorize work order types as corrective, preventive, or predictive.
• Keep stakeholders “in the know” with email or text notifications.
• Quickly review documentation such as manuals and warranties with attachment capabilities.
• Analyze emerging maintenance trends with detailed work order histories. Plan and adjust maintenance schedules to maximize asset uptime and minimize maintenance cost.
• Monitor the work order process through tracking and revising the workflow based on the current estimated downtime of assets.
• Ensures that the proper resources, parts, and tools are available when needed during maintenance tasks.

Implement Work Order Best Practices with FTMaintenance

FTMaintenance is CMMS software designed to reduce or eliminate the complexity of managing work orders using powerful, yet easy-to-use-features like those mentioned above. With FTMaintenance, work orders are available on mobile devices as well as desktops and laptops. The ability to attach documents to each work order is helpful for providing complete and accurate work order information. Work orders can be created and submitted in a fraction of the time that it takes to manually type or write out and print a work order.

To learn how FTMaintenance can help your maintenance team, read more about our CMMS features, or schedule a demo today.

Historically, maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) inventory management has been viewed as a necessary cost of doing business, a cost center, with little thought given into how much money is spent on acquiring and storing spare parts and materials. As a result, money has been tied up in overstuffed MRO stockrooms, emergency inventory purchases, and expedited shipping costs.

Today, organizations recognize maintenance operations as a potential source of cost savings. Upper management pays close attention to whether investments in MRO inventory result in improved asset availability and profitability. Due to the high costs and risks associated with poorly managed MRO inventory, upper management holds maintenance managers responsible for tracking inventory management metrics and KPIs.

What are Inventory Management KPIs?

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric, or measured value, which is directly tied to a specific strategic business goal. Inventory management KPIs track how well your organization’s MRO inventory supports your organization’s goals and the return gained on investments in inventory. Over time, KPIs show you whether you are approaching or moving further away from your organization’s goals.

Before we dive into our discussion about inventory management metrics, we must point out the importance of working with reliable data. Whether you already have an inventory management system in place or are just beginning to track MRO inventory data, reliable data is essential.

Many organizations track inventory management activities with computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software. A CMMS provides accurate data for calculating inventory management KPIs and removes the manual effort of generating maintenance reports.

Inventory Management KPI Examples

Every organization has unique business goals and therefore, uses their own set of inventory KPIs. Nonetheless, some common KPIs serve the needs of organizations in a range of industries. The purpose of this article is to introduce you to these common inventory metrics that can help you meet your maintenance management and MRO inventory management goals. Consider the following common inventory management KPIs.

For you convenience, the KPIs discussed in this article are also available as an infographic. Download the MRO Inventory Management KPIs infographic.

Inventory Accuracy: What’s In Stock?

One of the basic components of MRO inventory management is identifying what items you have and how many. The inventory accuracy KPI is simply a measure of how closely your count of physical inventory matches what is recorded in your CMMS or inventory management system.

To calculate this metric, an employee audits the items on your storeroom shelves and compares them to the database record. A truly accurate inventory will have matching on-hand quantities, storage location(s), and identification tags such as barcodes. Use the following formula to calculate the inventory accuracy KPI:

How to Interpret Inventory Accuracy

It is not realistic, nor practical, that records exactly match for every item that is counted. For example, data entry errors, mislabeled or confusing location codes, and outstanding transactions all impact inventory accuracy. For most organizations, inventory accuracy ratings of 95% or greater are considered acceptable. Sophisticated organizations may adjust this tolerance based on an item’s criticality, but for most, maximum accuracy is the goal.

If your inventory accuracy rating is low, it is imperative that you find out why and, if necessary, implement process improvements. Inaccurate inventory counts can lead to lost production, unnecessary downtime, under- or over-ordering, and costly emergency purchases.

Accuracy may be improved by performing regular physical inventory audits whether by exhaustive or cycle counting. CMMS software is a valuable tool which automatically updates inventory records as parts are updated in the system, via consumption on work orders or as newly purchased parts are received.

Inventory Turnover: How Much Stock Should I Have?

Whereas the inventory accuracy KPI tells you what is in stock, the inventory turnover KPI helps you determine how much inventory you should maintain. Ideally, there will be enough stock to meet demand but not so much that you have significant overstock.

Turnover is the rate at which an inventory item’s stock is used. This KPI measures how quickly you work through the lowest level of stock of an inventory item you desire to keep on hand in a given time period. Knowing an inventory item’s turnover rate is used to help set an appropriate reorder point. Reorder point is the minimum quantity of an item that, when reached, triggers an action to replenish stock. Inventory turnover is determined by the following formula:

How to Interpret Inventory Turnover

Low turnover (values less than 1) is typically associated with infrequent usage and/or overstock. For example, a widget has a reorder point of 10 and 3 were used in a measured timeframe of one year. The widget’s turnover rate is 0.3 (3 ÷ 10 = 0.3). Being less than 1, a turnover of 0.3 means the item is used at a relatively slow pace. Keeping 10 widgets in stock at any given time when only 3 are used per year seems excessive. In this scenario, the reorder point could be lowered.

High turnover (values greater than 1) is typical of frequently-used items, which are more at risk of stockouts. For example, a widget’s reorder point is set to 10, and 30 were used in the measured timeframe. The turnover rate for the widget is 3 (30 ÷ 10 = 3). With a value greater than 1 (3 times greater than 1 in this case), the item is used at a relatively fast pace. The reorder point should be set carefully enough so that stock doesn’t run out.

Be aware that the inventory turnover KPI does not account for the type of inventory being managed, so values derived from this calculation require further investigation. Consider the case of critical spares. Critical spares naturally have low turnover because they are seldom used, but are held as safety stock.  While regular usage is low, it is desirable to keep extra stock on hand as insurance. On the other hand, the turnover rate of often-used consumables and non-critical spares will be naturally high.

Another point that bears discussion is the timeframe in which turnover is calculated. Keep in mind that there is a delay between when orders are placed and when parts arrive. The time period used to determine turnover should be in line with your procurement process and cover the time from the start of the ordering process to the receipt of goods. We recommend the turnover reporting timeframe be no shorter than a week and no longer than a month.

Manually determining the optimal reorder point on tens, hundreds, or thousands of inventory items is nearly impossible. Simply reordering parts when they run out is not a sustainable strategy either. CMMS software contains features such as reorder point notifications, alerting you when parts need to be reordered. Integrated purchasing functionality allows you to automatically generate requisitions and purchase orders.

Stockouts: Are Parts Available When Needed?

The inventory stockouts KPI determines the frequency of out-of-stock occurrences, where stock is not available when needed. A stockout happens every time an employee attempts to retrieve a part and is unable to do so. Determining stockouts is fairly straightforward:

How to Interpret Stockouts

It goes without saying that stockouts should be avoided. In many industries, best practices suggest the value of the inventory stockouts KPI should be less than 1%. However, getting too carried away with eliminating stockouts can lead to overordering, which may result in overstuffed stockrooms and dead money that can’t be recovered.

Risk of stockouts influences reorder points and is typically looked at alongside the inventory turnover KPI. Low stockouts on items with low turnover can be a sign of overstocking. Low stockouts on high-volume items means that demand for the item is being met. Frequent stockout occurrences imply that reorder points may be set too low, though the length of your procurement process could also play a role. CMMS software keeps track of reorder points to help you avoid stockout occurrences.

Supply On Hand: How Long Will Stock Last?

The supply on hand KPI estimates how long your current stock will last based on past usage. It takes into account your past usage and current quantity on hand, and expresses your supply in units of time. Supply on hand is determined by the following formula:

Calculating this metric is a little more involved than it first appears. Let’s walk through an example step by step:

1. Find your usage for the most recent reporting time period. It’s important to select a time period large enough to give you an accurate representation of your usage. Using too short of time period, such as a week or month, may not represent your “typical” usage. In this example, let’s assume 25 widgets were used during a reporting period of one year.
2. Divide your current quantity on hand by the usage during the time period. This gives you the usage for the time period. In this example, supply on hand will be expressed in terms of years since the reporting period is 1 year. We’ll use a quantity of 6 for our current quantity on hand.
3. Convert the time period from the previous step into your desired time period. We’ll choose to express supply on hand in terms of weeks, so we will multiply our supply on hand in years by 52, as there are 52 weeks in a year. Note that the conversion factor used depends on the original reporting time period.In this example, there is approximately 12 weeks’ supply of widgets.

How to Interpret Supply on Hand

Supply on hand reveals how long it would take for the quantity of the item to run down to zero. Of course, it would be wise to reorder before that point is reached. To gather meaning out of this metric, it should be looked at in tandem with other inventory metrics, like turnover and stockouts.

Low supply on hand may mean you have low stock or the reorder point is set too low. For low turnover items with a relatively short reporting timeframe, it may be that the item was recently replaced. Low stock items may be in danger of stockouts. Compare supply on hand with turnover and stockouts to determine whether the item has an appropriate reorder point.

Using the supply on hand calculation for high stock items identifies slow-moving or obsolete inventory. For slow-moving inventory, use the inventory turnover metric to determine a lower reorder point. Obsolete inventory can be set aside for future disposal, thereby clearing space for active inventory items.

Inventory reports available in CMMS software help you monitor your supply on hand and optimize inventory by bringing attention to slow-moving items.

Track Inventory Performance with FTMaintenance

Organizations are paying closer attention to how their investment in inventory is being managed. The inventory metrics provided in this article are intended to help you make smart decisions about your MRO inventory. CMMS software is a necessary tool for maintenance teams looking to track and improve their inventory practices.

FTMaintenance inventory management software provides a centralized system for tracking and managing your spare parts inventory. Quickly identify what’s in stock, automatically update stock levels, and create purchase requisitions in one click. Powerful reporting capability provides you with meaningful, actionable insights into inventory performance. Schedule a demo of FTMaintenance today.