Author: Ethan Wilke

Your assets are the centerpiece of your organization. In today’s economic environment, there is no room for downtime, losses in production, or poor quality. Though maintenance teams are recognized for their ability to keep assets running, businesses try to squeeze as much value out of their assets as possible. Therefore, organizations must practice asset management.

What is Asset Management?

Asset Lifecycle Process

In the finance industry, asset management is related to managing investments. When related to an industrial environment, asset management is the process of maximizing the value an asset provides to an organization throughout its entire lifecycle, in the most cost-effective manner. For this asset management definition, “assets” includes any physical items such as equipment, buildings, vehicles, tools, and property.

Asset Management vs. Maintenance Management

Based on the asset management definition provided, you may have noticed that it sounds very similar to maintenance management. You’re not alone in this observation. Many people use the two terms interchangeably, though they are indeed different.

Since there are many parts of an asset’s lifecycle, asset management involves contribution from multiple departments, such as asset planning, engineering, production, maintenance, and accounting. These groups work together to assess and manage an asset’s cost, value, risk, and performance. Depending on the organization, a single department may be responsible for many of these functions.

Our article, What is Maintenance Management? states that maintenance management focuses on the performance of maintenance activities and the coordination of maintenance resources including parts, labor, and budget. In the graphic above, you can see that maintenance – and therefore maintenance management – is only one piece of the asset management “puzzle.” The following section breaks down asset management into its basic components.

Components of Asset Management

The six main components of asset management are: identification, location, condition, specification, maintenance, and cost.

Identification

The purpose of asset identification is to know exactly what assets an organization is responsible for managing. While this sounds like common sense, in practice it can be more difficult than one might assume. Organizations may operate multiple buildings in a single location or worldwide, containing hundreds or even thousands of individual assets. A production line functions as a single integrated system, but is typically composed of multiple assets working together. Each of these assets is made up of several subassemblies, which can be further broken down into individual parts.

Given its complexity, companies must find an effective way to organize and store this information. Commonly, an asset registry (listing of assets), an asset hierarchy (nested listing of assets), and/or bills of materials are used.

Asset Hierarchy Example

Recommended Reading: What is an Asset Naming Convention?

Location

It’s not enough to know what assets you have – you must also know where your assets are located. Organizations that work with mobile assets like vehicles, onsite assets, or assets spread across multiple geographic regions should know where their assets are at all times. Graphic information system (GIS) mapping and global positioning system (GPS) technology help maintenance teams easily locate assets and plan future work with location in mind.

Condition

Knowing the condition of an asset is necessary for maintenance and decommission planning. Condition information is obtained through visual inspections or through direct monitoring with dedicated sensors. Additionally, SCADA systems or similar monitoring systems can help you track asset performance. Asset failure can be reported to the maintenance team via a maintenance request system.

Specification

An important component of managing assets is understanding an asset’s design and specification. The specification provides the boundaries for operating assets at maximum efficiency. Asset specification also drives maintenance procedures and ensures proper part replacement and repair. When unexpected breakdowns occur, knowing how assets should perform helps maintenance personnel better identify the cause of failures and return assets to service within its acceptable range for operation.

Maintenance

Once assets are identified and their locations, conditions, and specifications are known, a basic maintenance care plan can be created. Depending on an asset’s current condition, importance, and risk of failure, different maintenance strategies may be employed.

For example, corrective maintenance may be used on production assets that run infrequently and will be relatively inexpensive to fix in case of failure. On the other hand, highly critical assets – such as those that run constantly and whose failure would result in thousands of dollars in lost production – will benefit from comprehensive preventive maintenance.

Given the complexity of managing maintenance plans on hundreds to thousands of assets, organizations invest in a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS). As part of a complete asset management strategy, you can use a CMMS to plan, schedule, and execute maintenance activities that keep assets running. Additionally, CMMS tracks asset service history, including the labor resources, materials, and budget used to complete maintenance activities.

Cost

As stated in our definition, the asset management maximizes an asset’s useful life at minimal cost. As they age, assets become more costly to operate and maintain. Therefore, organizations must be able to monitor actual asset performance and identify areas of cost savings. Generally speaking, regular maintenance is cheaper than replacement.

Maintenance costs include how much maintenance is done, what tasks are performed, and what resources (i.e., labor and parts) are utilized. However, all assets will inevitably reach a point where they become more costly to maintain than to replace outright. In this case, it may be better to replace an expensive asset with a more efficient solution.

A CMMS helps you monitor asset management key performance indicators (KPIs) through maintenance reports. Maintenance management personnel can track performance metrics such as downtime, mean time to repair (MTTR), and mean time between failures (MTBF). Additionally, a CMMS makes it easy to track job completion, determine the percentage of corrective maintenance versus preventive maintenance, keep an eye on the backlog, and much more.

Manage Your Assets with FTMaintenance

Maintenance management is necessary for effective asset management, especially in asset-intensive industries such as oil and gas, power and energy, and water and wastewater. Because of its impact on the organization, there must be a system in place for tracking and managing vital asset information.

FTMaintenance computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) stores all of your asset information in one place, allowing you quickly find what you need. Combined with other maintenance management features, you’ll be able to create detailed maintenance plans and make data-driven decisions about the management of your assets. Learn more about the capabilities of FTMaintenance asset management software.

Key Takeaways

• MRO stands for maintenance, repair, and operations
• MRO is often overlooked, but can greatly impact an organization’s maintenance costs, inventory management, productivity, and procurement processes
• Computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software helps industrial maintenance teams manage and track MRO activities

There are a number of daily activities and processes required to keep a business running smoothly. Facilities and equipment need proper upkeep. Workers need personal protective equipment (PPE) to keep them safe from hazards. Stockrooms must be adequately stocked with tools, cleaning supplies, and other materials. These activities (and others) are referred to as maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO).

Unfortunately, MRO activities are often seen as minor relative to other business processes such as production. However, the degree to which an organization manages and carries out MRO activities greatly benefits – or hampers – business operations. As the term suggests, the maintenance team plays a large role in performing MRO. This article provides an overview of MRO as it relates to maintenance management.

What is MRO?

MRO is an acronym that stands for maintenance, repair, and operations. Broadly speaking, MRO refers to any activities and processes needed to run a business such as asset maintenance, accounting, customer service, and even administrative tasks like responding to emails and reception duties.

In manufacturing environments, MRO is understood to describe the activities associated with the upkeep of the company’s assets. It includes physical maintenance performed on buildings (including any structures and grounds); electrical, lighting, HVAC, and plumbing systems; and equipment used in the production of finished goods or delivery of services.

Let’s further define what maintenance, repair, and operations means.

Maintenance refers to actions taken proactively to prevent an asset from breaking down. Proactive maintenance strategies include preventive maintenance (PM), condition-based maintenance (CbM), and predictive maintenance (PdM).

Repair refers to actions taken to restore a non- or under-performing asset to operational condition. This type of reactive maintenance activity is called corrective maintenance (CM).

Operations involve managing the day-to-day activities that help the business run efficiently. Maintenance operations include:

• Work order management
• Asset and equipment management
• Spare parts inventory management
• Preventive maintenance planning and scheduling
• Work request management

To make managing MRO activities more effective, organizations utilize computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software. We discuss more about the benefits of using a CMMS for MRO later in this article.

Why is MRO Important?

MRO impacts an organization in four main areas.

Maintenance Costs

Asset failure is inevitable, but without adequate maintenance and repair, assets fail more frequently. Unplanned failures are more costly to resolve and lead to other losses due to production shutdowns, defective or damaged products, unproductive labor, missed business opportunities, and so on.

Poor maintenance also places undue stress on machinery, shortening their lifespan. As assets wear down, organizations must then decide whether to fully replace the asset or continue to repair it. Depending on the type of asset, new purchases can range from thousands to millions of dollars.

For repairs, the organization can either contract with third-party service providers or use their own personnel. Outsourced services increase maintenance costs by charging higher rates. If internal resources are used, the organization must purchase and stock the materials needed to perform maintenance work.

Inventory Control

Executing MRO activities requires the organization to purchase a variety of materials, supplies, and parts. However, it is common in small businesses that MRO purchases are carried out by maintenance staff that does not have strong skills in purchasing or procurement. Because of this, inventory management is often out of control.

For example, it is common for maintenance staff to over-order in fear of running out of stocked items. However, uncontrolled purchases lead to wasted money, cluttered stockrooms, and run the risk of stocking obsolete parts. Other times, disorganization makes it hard for employees to find parts, so orders are placed for parts that are already in stock but cannot be located.

Another situation that can present itself is when parts are not available when needed. Known as a stockout, this situation increases maintenance costs by extending asset downtime, thereby increasing total repair costs. To resolve the situation, organizations pay higher costs for expedited shipping or use risky stop-gap measures until parts arrive.

Learn more about MRO Inventory Management

Plant Productivity

Poor MRO management results in a number of hidden costs due to low productivity. Organizations that operate on reactive maintenance wait around for assets to fail – and when they do, it leads to excessive downtime that could have been reduced or avoided.

Without proper documentation of maintenance needs, maintenance teams tend to perform work that is unnecessary, unproductive, or counter-productive. Maintenance work on equipment that doesn’t need it leads to unnecessary downtime and production backlogs.

Stockouts prevent technicians from carrying out needed maintenance and repairs, leading to production stoppages. Instead, critical maintenance is deferred or operators are left idling until assets are returned to service.

Purchasing and Procurement

Organizations constantly purchase goods and services to support MRO efforts. Commonly, maintenance staff makes a high number of unplanned, low cost purchases that, when combined, make up a fair amount of the organization’s total expenditure. Proper MRO management reduces purchasing costs through volume discounts, vendor management, and other inventory optimization techniques.

Types of MRO

MRO can be divided into several subcategories including:

• Infrastructure repair and maintenance
• Production equipment repair and maintenance
• Material handling equipment maintenance
• Tooling and consumables

Infrastructure Repair and Maintenance

Infrastructure is the property owned by the organization, which includes the land and any buildings on it. Like other assets, infrastructure needs regular maintenance. MRO activities related to infrastructure include hard facility management services like building maintenance, responding to work requests, and capital improvements, as well as soft services like pest control, groundskeeping, and janitorial services.

Production Equipment Repair and Maintenance

This area of MRO is concerned with avoiding setbacks to production. Asset-intensive industries like manufacturing utilize a variety of equipment to produce finished goods and services. Over time, machine components wear down to the point where they stop working, causing failures and downtime. In some industries, production downtime costs thousands to tens of thousands of dollars per minute!

Manufacturing equipment requires different types of maintenance and repair depending on the makeup of their internal components and related systems. For example, moving mechanical parts need regular lubrication to prevent unwanted heat or vibration. Other components simply need to be replaced just before failure or shortly after they wear out. Electrical systems call for periodic calibration to verify their output.

Material Handling Equipment Maintenance

Material handling equipment includes equipment used to transport raw materials to production or packaged goods to warehouses or loading docks. Examples of material handling equipment include forklifts, conveyor systems, palletizers, and robotic arms. Though not directly involved in production, these assets are an important part of a smooth production process, and therefore need to be maintained.

Tools and Consumables

Tools and consumables are the items used to perform repairs on infrastructure, production assets, and material handling equipment. Tools include both power tools (i.e., drills, electric saws, and grinders), hand tools (i.e., hammers, screwdrivers, pliers), and their related bits. Unlike consumables, tools are durable and used over time.

Consumables are items that must be replaced regularly because they wear out or are used up. Consumable items include spare parts and supplies like adhesives, oils, and coolants. In addition, personal protective equipment (PPE), safety gear, and cleaning chemicals are also considered consumables.

Managing MRO with a CMMS

Industrial maintenance teams can leverage a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) to manage MRO. A CMMS provides a single platform for managing maintenance operations and allows organizations to do the following:

• Improve maintenance tracking by keeping a record of all maintainable assets.
• Make maintenance work more effective by providing technicians with fully detailed work orders.
• Plan and schedule maintenance for equipment and facilities.
• Streamline inventory holdings by tracking the usage and movement of spare parts, tools, and consumables.
• Lower inventory purchasing costs by optimizing orders from low-cost vendors.
• Increase productivity by providing access to maintenance data through internet-connected mobile devices.
• Gain visibility of maintenance needs by implementing a work request system.
• Analyze asset performance to see which assets are costing the most money and why.
• Make better MRO management decisions by leveraging data from maintenance reports.

Improve Maintenance Operations with FTMaintenance

MRO is a crucial aspect of running a business, whether a small company or a large manufacturer. When left unmanaged, MRO processes pose significant risk to the organization. CMMS software like FTMaintenance improves MRO and MRO inventory management by automating maintenance operations, and providing a platform for documenting, managing, and tracking maintenance activities. Request a demo to learn how FTMaintenance can improve your maintenance operations.

What is a Bill of Materials?

In a maintenance context, a bill of materials (BOM) is a formal, structured list of parts and their respective quantities that make up a specific component or asset. It can be thought of as a recipe of sorts. A BOM acts as a centralized point of reference for determining the parts that comprise a piece of equipment.

Bills of materials vary in complexity depending on an organization’s level of asset management. At the most basic level is a pseudo-bill of materials, which lists critical spares and common replacement parts. The next level in complexity is a maintenance bill of materials, which includes all parts that the maintenance team is realistically expected to repair and/or replace during an asset’s lifetime. Asset-intensive organizations or organizations with robust asset management requirements may use an equipment bill of materials (EBOM), which lists every part and material that makes up an asset.

Importance of a Bill of Materials

Imagine cooking a meal without a recipe. You will need to travel to the fridge, cabinet, or pantry every time an ingredient is needed. Worse yet, you may not have the items you need on hand, causing you to go without, find a substitution, or make a trip to the grocery store.

The scenario above is analogous to performing maintenance. Bills of materials support high-quality, efficient asset maintenance. Identifying the parts required to maintain assets before maintenance begins helps organizations determine whether they have what they need to execute maintenance work. In addition, BOMs support MRO inventory management activities by ensuring the correct parts (and quantities) are available.

Organizations that do not use bills of materials are prone to unnecessary downtime, incorrect inventory purchases, incorrect part assignment on work orders, and other costly mistakes.

What Should be Included on a Bill of Materials?

The information included on a BOM is specific to an organization’s maintenance process. In general, a bill of materials includes the following information:

• Part name
• Part number
• Description of the part
• Quantity
• Unit price
• Vendor name
• Vendor part number

Bill of Materials Example

Below is a representation of a multi-level BOM. It shows the relationship between an asset, its related subassemblies, and parts/components in a parent-child hierarchical view.

Depending on the system used, a bill of materials may be presented in a single-level or nested list in a tabular format (i.e., arranged in a table with rows and columns).

Who Uses a Bill of Materials?

A bill of materials has many end users. Maintenance planners use a BOM to help determine what parts to buy or what parts may be needed in the future. BOMs help stockroom employees know which parts belong to a particular asset. Maintenance technicians utilize a BOM to identify the parts to retrieve from a stockroom, or if parts are unavailable, who to call to order replacements. Because many different stakeholders will use the bill of materials, it is important to keep it up to date and periodically review it to ensure its accuracy.

Benefits of a Bill of Materials

The benefits of using a bill of materials for maintenance are widespread. In general, it helps you better visualize how your assets and parts are related. Below are some benefits a BOM provides:

• Reduced downtime: Technicians can refer to the BOM to quickly identify parts needed to complete repairs.
• Simplified procurement and purchasing: Less research is required to identify what parts need to be reordered. Part numbers are readily available when creating requisitions and purchase orders.
• Optimized maintenance scheduling: A BOM ensures that all of the correct parts are available for upcoming maintenance work.
• Fewer incorrect inventory purchases: Since there is less opportunity for guesswork, fewer mistakes are made when reordering parts.
• Streamlined inventory holdings: If not being used elsewhere, parts belonging to decommissioned assets can be removed from the stockroom, reducing the carrying cost of storing unneeded spare parts.

Bill of Materials Software

For maintenance teams, BOM creation and management is best done in computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software. A CMMS automatically generates a bill of materials based on the parts used on work orders. Because the CMMS stores asset and MRO inventory in a single database, users can access robust part information in just a few clicks. When it comes time to reorder parts, inventory staff can view purchasing and vendor information from right within the software.

Effectively Manage Bills of Materials with FTMaintenance CMMS

Bills of materials help organizations build relationships between assets and their related parts, providing many benefits for managing maintenance operations. FTMaintenance Select provides a single platform for managing spare part inventories, including the ability to create asset-specific parts lists. Request a demo today to learn more about FTMaintenance Select CMMS software.

Clear communication is essential for business success. Often times, we communicate by talking with one another, but this can fail to get the message across. If you’ve ever played the game Telephone – where a message is passed verbally from person to person (slightly changing each time it’s passed) – you know this to be true, especially if the message is long and complex. Written communications, such as work orders, help to close this information gap.

What is a Work Order?

A work order is a written means of communicating information about a task. For example, an electrician may receive a work order to complete a wiring project at a construction site. Production staff may be given a work order that instructs them to calibrate a machine. A work order may be used to tell the sanitation crew that equipment is ready to be deep cleaned. A maintenance work order provides details about maintenance, repair, or operations work, such as replacing a part, returning an asset to operating condition, or performing an inspection. In some organizations, work orders are also commonly referred to as “jobs”.

Types of Work Orders

There are multiple types of maintenance work orders. Depending on the organization, maintenance work orders generally fall into one of the following categories:

• Corrective maintenance (CM): Includes the restoration of assets to optimal or operational conditions.
• Preventive maintenance (PM): Includes regularly occurring time-based or usage-based maintenance such as inspections, cleaning, or part replacements.
• Condition-based maintenance (CbM): Uses real-time equipment data collected by sensors to trigger work orders when assets are approaching failure.
• Predictive maintenance (PdM): Similar to preventive maintenance, but uses real-time and historical equipment data to trigger jobs.

Lifecycle of a Maintenance Work Order

A maintenance work order is a “living document” that goes through multiple stages throughout its life.

1. Creation: A maintenance work order identifies the work and resources necessary to complete the job. The job is then scheduled and assigned to a technician, setting a deadline for completion. Maintenance work orders may be created in a number of ways:

• Customers or non-maintenance employees submit maintenance requests to the maintenance team when assets are not performing correctly. These requests are reviewed and turned into work orders.
• A maintenance manager creates work orders for planned maintenance work or in response to issues that have been reported.
• Maintenance technicians request or create work orders for issues noticed during their daily work.
• Work order software automatically generates work orders for regularly occurring preventive maintenance activities.

2. Performance: As the work is being performed (or shortly after it is complete), technicians document the resources (i.e., labor, materials, time) actually used to complete the work, and include any special notes about what was done.

3. Closure: Once the job is complete, the work order is approved, if required, and closed. The closed work order becomes a permanent record of what was done and what resources were used. Upon closure, the work order is filed away.

4. Analysis: An asset’s maintenance history is comprised of the contents of all its associated closed work orders. The history is available to assist with future troubleshooting, fine tune procedures, prepare for audits, and evaluate the performance of assets and maintenance employees.

Information Included on a Maintenance Work Order

The information contained on a maintenance work order varies, but typically includes the following:

• The name of the requesting party
• A way to track the work order, such as a work order number
• An explanation of the problem
• The name and location of the asset(s) in need of service
• Instructions for carrying out the work
• The required parts
• Who is assigned to the job
• The desired completion date and time or recurrence schedule (for preventive maintenance work orders)
• Cost estimates
• Attachments such as documentation, images, etc.

Managing Work Orders

As crucial as work orders are to your maintenance operations, they are almost useless if not managed properly. Surprisingly, many organizations still use manual work order management systems, such as pen and paper, whiteboards and bulletin boards, or spreadsheets. These systems lack many important capabilities, such as comprehensive scheduling, automatic work order generation, automated notifications, and reporting. Computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software is a much better option.

A CMMS provides a work order management system that helps you effectively track work orders through their lifecycle. Using a CMMS, anyone in maintenance can create, manage, track, complete, and analyze work orders. The software stores all maintenance information in one place, allowing you to quickly build work orders.

When work orders are assigned or due, the CMMS can automatically notify the appropriate employees. Maintenance managers can access the system to see a work order’s status and see who is working on what. When completed and closed, the CMMS stores work orders in history where they can be analyzed using maintenance reports.

FTMaintenance Work Order Management Software

Choosing the right work order management system is just as important as the work orders themselves. FTMaintenance ensures that no work orders fall through the cracks by automating work order generation, activation, assignment, and distribution. Mobile accessibility expands FTMaintenance work order management to technicians on the go. Discover all the capabilities of FTMaintenance work order software.

What is Accountability in Maintenance Management?

When you hear the word accountability, what do you feel? Fear? Stress? Usually when we hear this word, it’s in reaction to a negative situation – something went wrong and someone will be blamed for the event. You might say that a person must be held accountable for his/her actions, suggesting that there should be some punishment. Due to this association, moving towards a culture of accountability can be challenging.

With that said, it is important to remember that “accountability” is not the same as “blame.” Accountability is being responsible for one’s own actions and the results of those actions, both good and bad. For maintenance managers, the goal of creating a culture of accountability is to improve maintenance processes, not to assign blame. Accountability is a forward-thinking strategy. Your team is made up of problem solvers. Every failure is an opportunity to learn from what went wrong and what could be done to improve the situation or to prevent it from happening in the future.

Creating a Culture of Accountability

Accountability starts with communication. Maintenance managers must help technicians understand what is expected of them, to what standard work will be held, and what deadlines must be met. They also have an obligation to monitor the processes put in place and ensure that procedures are being followed. Being able to express concerns and accept feedback also plays an important role in strengthening communication and maintaining accountability.

The idea of accountability sounds really good on paper, but how does it play out on the plant floor? After all, there’s only one of you – you can’t watch what every person is doing every minute of every day. How can you ensure that your staff members are personally invested in developing and maintaining a culture of accountability? How can you make sure that maintenance is being performed correctly? How can you make sure that employees are staying productive? How will technicians know the specifications for each asset?

One thing you can do is provide tools, like computerized maintenance management software (CMMS), for you and your staff that documents, tracks, and communicates your maintenance process along with detailed feedback on the maintenance performance of your staff.

How a CMMS Improves Accountability

Without a system in place for communicating maintenance requirements and performance expectations, it is difficult for anyone to be accountable for their work. There is no record that can be referenced when there are miscommunications and misunderstandings about a particular job or task. A CMMS helps foster communication by documenting and storing information about your maintenance assets. The following are a few ways in which a CMMS can help improve accountability.

Work Order Tracking

A CMMS helps you create detail-rich work orders and provides you with full visibility of work being done. Using work order software to generate work orders makes it easy to communicate necessary details such as who is responsible for the work, what materials are needed to complete the job, and when the work must be completed. You can also use the CMMS to quickly check the status of work orders and follow up on any tasks that are incomplete or overdue. The work order itself then becomes the reference point for both maintenance manager and technician to discuss.

Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance (PM) procedures must be closely followed in order to keep equipment functioning. Because the consequences that may occur from skipped or missed preventive maintenance can be quite serious, it is important that all team members are held accountable for their timely and accurate completion. Preventive maintenance software, like CMMS, can be just the tool you need to keep your team accountable.

Scheduling PMs for a handful of assets may not be much of a problem, but most companies maintain hundreds – if not thousands – of pieces of equipment. Without CMMS, keeping track of these schedules is nearly impossible. Automated work order generation, distribution, and notification ensure that preventive maintenance assignments are not missed or forgotten.

CMMS also helps you standardize PM activities through the use of tasks. Detailed tasks lists communicate your expectations for the work while also serving the purpose of providing step-by-step instructions for technicians to follow. In general, task lists will spell out what must be done, how it should be done, what guidelines or specifications must be met, and approximately how long a task should take. Because they follow the same procedure each and every time, it becomes easy to tell when PMs fall below expectations and where additional training might be needed. This performance evaluation data is most clearly revealed in reports, which are discussed later.

Notifications

Notifications automate communication about the status of your maintenance activities, helping to ensure that work is not forgotten, lost, or miscommunicated. When a maintenance request or work order is created in CMMS software, notifications can be sent to the right people, letting them know that a new job is waiting.

A CMMS can also be used to implement an approval process for work order closure. As part of this process, notifications can inform a superior that a work order is ready for approval or let someone else know that approval has been given. Securing the approval of others helps facilitate a system of checks and balances that ensures maintenance work is meeting expectations.

Mobility

A mobile CMMS empowers your staff to use maintenance software from the field. With more access to your maintenance management software, technicians are more likely to report issues on the spot, track tasks and time as they go, and stay productive. CMMS software that includes GPS or GIS functionality can also help you keep track of where employees and assets are located.

Reports and Dashboards

Maintenance reports and dashboards are vital tools for holding your team accountable for its performance. Maintenance management reports help you track productivity, work completion rates, maintenance costs, and more. Dashboards graphically display key performance indicators (KPIs), allowing you to monitor operations at a glance. Analyzing the metrics provided by a CMMS helps you identify areas of improvement, which can be reviewed with your team.

Improve Accountability at Your Facility

Accountability should not be considered a bad word. It is a shared responsibility between team members that can foster more collaboration and accuracy, thereby improving maintenance operations and morale. But creating a culture of accountability requires the right tools. FTMaintenance provides a single platform for managing, documenting, and tracking maintenance activities. Request a demo of FTMaintenance to discover how our maintenance management software can help improve accountability.

Even if you don’t call it by this name, you may already be familiar with the concept of corrective maintenance in your daily life. If the dryer breaks, you fix or replace it. If windows are dirty, you clean them. If the color of your siding is fading, you paint it.

When this concept is applied to the industrial workplace, there’s a little more to it. Machine breakdowns require investigation to identify the issue and make a decision as to whether a part should be repaired or replaced. Components are cleaned so that assets can perform at their highest capacity. General upkeep is done to keep environments safe and secure.

You know that preventive maintenance is used to prevent breakdowns before they happen, so where does corrective maintenance fit into the big picture?

Read Blog Post: What is Preventive Maintenance?

Corrective Maintenance Definition

Corrective maintenance (CM) is a maintenance task performed to restore a non- or under-performing asset to an optimum or operational condition. This corrective maintenance definition may mean different things, depending on your organization or industry.

For example, corrective maintenance in equipment-centric businesses may be the repair or replacement of a part that has worn down. Companies that deal primarily with non-equipment assets, such as facilities or property, might consider mowing the lawn to be CM.

The need for corrective action may be discovered in many ways. A maintenance technician may notice a degrading part while performing a preventive maintenance job like an inspection. A machine operator may alert the maintenance team that equipment is not functioning as expected. Seasonal weather may dictate the need for corrective maintenance, such as when a parking lot must be plowed after a snow storm.

Types of Corrective Maintenance

CM can be broken down into smaller categories: scheduled and unscheduled.

• Scheduled corrective maintenance: Maintenance that is needed, but not required to be performed immediately.
• Unscheduled corrective maintenance: Maintenance that is required due to a critical failure that must be corrected without delay.

Corrective Maintenance Examples

The following examples are based on the types of corrective maintenance listed above:

• A spray nozzle becomes clogged causing lubricant to stop flowing through the nozzle. A work order is created to clear the blockage or replace the nozzle head at the time of the next inspection (scheduled corrective maintenance).
• Mineral build-up from hard water collects in a pipe, increasing the pressure and causing it to burst. The pipe must be replaced as soon as possible (unscheduled corrective maintenance).

Advantages of Corrective Maintenance

When used as part of a larger maintenance strategy, corrective maintenance can provide multiple benefits.

• Less Planning Required: Although some corrective maintenance activities must still be planned, compared to preventive maintenance schedules, there is less planning involved.
• Simplified Process: CM is need-based, allowing the maintenance team to focus on other tasks, such as preventive maintenance, until a breakdown or adverse condition occurs.
• More Appropriate in Some Cases: Corrective maintenance can save money because you don’t need to repair or replace an asset until maintenance is truly needed. For example, it is more cost-effective to replace a light bulb when it burns out than to spend time, money, and effort creating a preventive maintenance plan.

Disadvantages of Corrective Maintenance

Relying solely on CM without the benefit of a preventive maintenance strategy can have significant shortcomings.

• Increased Downtime: When serious problems arise, maintenance can be a slow and expensive process. Periods of equipment downtime affect production, costing the organization money.
• Higher Maintenance Costs: Without preventive maintenance, the condition of assets can deteriorate more significantly before problems are discovered, requiring the repair or replacement of more parts while also increasing labor costs.
• Safety Issues: When performed in response to a breakdown where money is being lost every second, maintenance may be rushed, leading to a higher risk of unsafe or improper work.
• Unpredictability: When emergencies happen, all other maintenance work is put on hold until the problem is resolved, leading to a backlog of work orders. Maintenance managers must also quickly identify the technicians and parts needed to address the repair.

When to Use Corrective Maintenance

Corrective maintenance is unavoidable. Every maintenance team performs some form of maintenance in response to equipment breakdowns and failures. But as we’ve stated, relying too heavily on CM can negatively impact operations. So when should you use corrective maintenance over other types of maintenance, such as preventive maintenance?

The decision can depend on many things, such as the cost of downtime, your assets’ reliability, and whether assets can be easily swapped if problems occur. Your company may also conduct a cost-benefits analysis on your assets to help support the case for scheduled corrective maintenance. Experts recommend that your balance of corrective vs. preventive maintenance should be 80/20. That is, 80% of maintenance should be preventive, while the remaining 20% should be corrective maintenance.

How CMMS Software Helps

The goal of every maintenance team is to reduce asset downtime. A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) like FTMaintenance stores information about corrective maintenance activities and automatically builds a maintenance history. During critical corrective maintenance tasks, it also allows technicians to quickly check an asset’s service history, speeding up troubleshooting and repairs. Corrective maintenance data can be analyzed to identify trends, spawning future preventive maintenance that will help avert future failure. Learn more about all the CMMS features FTMaintenance has to offer.

What is Preventive Maintenance?

Preventive maintenance (PM), sometimes called preventative maintenance, is maintenance that is proactively performed on an asset with the goal of lessening the likelihood of failure, reducing unexpected downtime, and prolonging its useful life.

In practice, this means regularly checking equipment for small problems and fixing them before failure can occur. Preventive maintenance activities may consist of inspections, calibrations, lubrications, adjustments, cleaning, or part replacements. As preventive maintenance activities are performed, workers also document an asset’s condition so they know when future maintenance may be needed.

Why Is PM Important?

Imagine what would happen if you waited until your car’s engine failed before you got an oil change. Each time this occurs, you would have to pay for an emergency tow truck to take it to a repair shop where the engine can be fixed. That’s if there is no catastrophic damage. Otherwise, you must source a rebuilt engine (usually thousands of dollars) and install it. Meanwhile, you must also find an alternate mode of transportation.

Clearly, waiting for your engine to fail is not only inconvenient, but also costly in terms of money and time. It would be much easier to try to prevent the breakdown before it happens. This same logic applies to the equipment and assets you work with every day.

Types of Preventive Maintenance

Preventive maintenance can take many forms. The two most common are:

• Calendar-based preventive maintenance: Maintenance activities are scheduled based on a specific date, or a time interval such as number of days.
• Runtime-based preventive maintenance: Maintenance activities are scheduled based on a specific measured runtime unit, such as miles, hours, or level.

Based on our definition above, the following may also be categorized as types of preventive maintenance:

• Condition-based maintenance (CbM): Maintenance is scheduled when a monitored condition characteristic of an asset’s normal operation, such as temperature, vibration, pressure, meter readings, etc., is out of its normal measured range.
• Predictive maintenance (PdM): Maintenance is scheduled by analyzing real-time equipment data and data from previous breakdowns.

Preventive Maintenance Examples

The following are examples of preventive maintenance examples, based on the types defined earlier in this article.

• A work order for cleaning the gutters is created every 6 months (calendar-based).
• An oil change work order is assigned to a technician after every 5,000 miles traveled by a fleet vehicle (runtime-based).
• An equipment sensor shows that a shaft is vibrating beyond normal limits. A work order is created with instructions to inspect, and potentially replace, the bearings (condition-based maintenance).
• After analyzing real-time and historical maintenance data, an analyst concludes that a machine will likely fail after running for 1,000 hours. A work order is created to inspect a subassembly after 950 more hours of runtime (predictive maintenance).

Advantages and Disadvantages of Preventive Maintenance

Advantages

There are a number of advantages of preventive maintenance compared to other types of maintenance, such as corrective maintenance (CM).

• Better Preparation for Maintenance Work: Since maintenance activities can be planned ahead of time, you can efficiently coordinate any required parts, supplies, and labor resources before work is due.
• Improved Scheduling: PM activities can be scheduled to fit into the production schedule or during planned plant shutdowns.
• Lower Overall Maintenance Costs: Unplanned maintenance is often more expensive due to excessive downtime, loss of production, and expedited shipping fees. The cost of preventive maintenance activities is more controlled. In fact, companies typically save 12-18% on total maintenance costs using preventive maintenance.

Disadvantages

Preventive maintenance is an important part of every maintenance strategy. However, preventive maintenance does have some limitations.

• More Time Needed to Plan: Designing a PM plan takes time, effort, and ability. This project requires dedicated resources, which may not always be readily available.
• Increased Costs from Excessive Maintenance: Performing maintenance on equipment that doesn’t need it leads to unnecessary downtime, labor costs, and part usage. Additionally, incorrect re-assembly, misalignment, or other errors caused by nonessential interactions can actually reduce the reliability of your assets.
• More Maintenance Resources are Required: Preventive maintenance requires additional workers, parts, and budget to implement correctly. However, the long-term benefits you will receive will far outweigh this requirement.

When to Use Preventive Maintenance

Even with all its benefits, it may not always be clear when to use preventive maintenance. Ideally, you’ll want to use it to extend the lifespan of all your assets, but if you’re just getting started, you need to prioritize.

At a minimum, preventive maintenance should be applied to assets that are critical to production, where their ability to perform their job is of high importance. From there, you can expand your plan to include non-critical equipment and facilities.

Using a PM program can also better organize the activities of the maintenance department. Carefully thinking through your maintenance operations helps you better forecast the demand for maintenance resources and make it easier to balance the work load. The creation of standardized PM task lists will ensure that all employees are performing work in the same way. Also, using a preventive maintenance plan as a guide keeps the team on task and makes sure that maintenance is being done when it’s needed.

How Preventive Maintenance Software Helps

Preventive maintenance simplifies and standardizes complex maintenance processes. However, because PMs will likely be performed on a large number of assets, it is nearly impossible to effectively track everything manually. Preventive maintenance software, like FTMaintenance computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software, stores all of your maintenance data in one place so you can easily keep track of all your PM activities.

Every industrial organization relies on well-maintained assets to keep their business going. Maintenance management is an important, yet seldom discussed, aspect of managing a company. People unfamiliar with working in industrial environments may not understand what is meant by maintenance management. In this article, we explore many common questions surrounding maintenance management.

What is Maintenance Management?

Maintenance management is an orderly process to control the maintenance resources and activities required to preserve assets at, or repair them to, an acceptable working order. While you may interpret this definition of maintenance management as simply meaning “fixing things,” that would be an oversimplification. There is a lot more to maintenance management than most people realize. Since much of an organization’s money is tied up in equipment and facilities, important decisions are made regarding time, people, and money.

Why is Maintenance Management Important?

Maintenance directly impacts the long-term success of an organization. Assets that are poorly maintained experience frequent, unexpected downtime, and cause a ripple effect. Instability, inconsistent product quality, stopped production, and high operational costs jeopardize an organization’s profitability and longevity.

When done properly, maintenance management keeps assets in optimum operating condition. Less disruption in production or service leads to efficient operations, increases quality, and improves productivity. In addition, maintenance management lowers operational costs, protects the organization from liability, and improves environmental and personal safety.

Further Reading: 5 Reasons Maintenance Management is Important

Objectives of Maintenance Management

All forms of maintenance management share similar objectives no matter the industry, plant, or product or service offered. The following are some objectives of maintenance management:

• Minimizing asset failure and downtime
• Extending asset life
• Planning maintenance work
• Cost control and budgeting
• Improving product quality
• Developing improved policies, procedures, and standards
• Complying with regulations
• Ensuring safety of personnel

As you can see, each of these objectives is closely tied to one another, and is crucial to the success of the organization. We cover the maintenance management objectives listed above in more detail in our article, 8 Maintenance Management Objectives.

Components of Maintenance Management

Maintenance management is made up of many key functions. Each of these functions must be managed in and of itself to improve the maintenance process. Listed below are the components of maintenance management.

Work Order Management

Work orders are the primary channel of communication for maintenance work. Work order management is the system that defines how work orders are processed and completed. It boils down to how the maintenance department makes sure that work gets done accurately and on time. This includes rule setting for work order creation, prioritization, scheduling, assignment, distribution, execution, documentation, and closure.

Read more about the work order management process.

Asset Management

Asset Lifecycle Process

In an industrial setting, asset management seeks to maximize the value of fixed assets throughout their lifecycle. Maintenance is only one aspect of asset management, which also includes planning, acquisition, operation, and decommissioning.

For its part, maintenance management helps extend an asset’s useable life by coordinating the resources needed to keep it in operating condition. This includes monitoring an asset’s condition, knowing its performance specifications, applying effective maintenance strategies, and tracking maintenance costs. Based on these factors, an organization can determine whether it’s better to repair or replace the asset.

Facility Management

Like asset management, facility management encompasses a range of functions and activities, of which maintenance management is a part. Facility management coordinates physical workplaces, people, and support services to support business goals. This includes hard facilities management services relating to the physical structure of the building, and soft facilities management services related to people.

Maintenance management contributes in a number of ways. During everyday operations, maintenance resolves unexpected issues. Regular inspections of a building’s HVAC, electrical, plumbing, and other systems help identify longer-term maintenance needs. Additionally, maintenance management functions keep the organization up-to-date on environmental and health and safety regulations.

Read More about Facility Management: What is Facility Management?

MRO Inventory Management

Another component of maintenance management is the management of maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) inventory. This type of inventory includes items such as chemicals and cleaners, tools, safety equipment, personal protective equipment, and other consumables. Managing MRO inventory involves procuring, storing, using, and replenishing stock at a low cost. The main functions of MRO inventory management are:

• Identification: Identifying what MRO items the organization uses and their specifications.
• Location: Creating an organized system that allows team members to find items quickly
• Procurement: Acquiring MRO items needed for maintenance work.
• Inventory Control: Ensuring the right stock is available at the right place at the right time.

Explore these concepts in detail in our article, What is MRO Inventory Management?

Maintenance Planning and Scheduling

Maintenance planning and scheduling is the cornerstones of effective maintenance management. It involves prioritizing maintenance work and organizing it so that it is completed efficiently.

Planning activities consider everything that will be needed for maintenance work to be performed, including: what tasks need to be done, how tasks will be performed, what parts will be needed, and who will do the work. Those involved in maintenance management must coordinate employee schedules and part availability with ever-changing maintenance priorities and asset availability.

Scheduling determines when jobs are performed. Some maintenance work is urgent and performed immediately, while other jobs are scheduled to be completed in the near future. Regularly occurring maintenance work, such as inspections and condition monitoring, is scheduled in advance at weekly, monthly, or even yearly intervals. Therefore, it makes sense that scheduled maintenance is planned in advance.

While it is not necessary for maintenance to be planned and scheduled, many organizations desire to move towards a proactive, rather than reactive, maintenance culture. In another section, we will describe the differences between proactive and reactive maintenance.

Maintenance Request Management

While much of an organization’s maintenance needs are handled within the maintenance department, other departments and employees may request maintenance assistance. Requests that come from outside the maintenance department must be reviewed and evaluated for their legitimacy. Valid, approved requests move on to become work orders.

In addition to receiving, reviewing, and accepting, maintenance request management includes communicating with requesters. Requesters expect to be informed about the status of their request, such as whether the requests have been approved, when work will take place, and whether the requested work has been completed.

Further Reading: What is a Maintenance Request System?

Reporting

As with all types of management, reporting plays an important role. Maintenance management reports inform the organization of different aspects of maintenance operations. Reports are used to collect key data about the maintenance department, track key performance indicators (KPIs), identify areas of improvement, and set goals. Reports also help the organization develop forecasts, guide budget planning, and make better decisions.

Maintenance Management Strategies

There is no one correct way to manage maintenance. Different types of maintenance management are used depending on factors such as the nature of the imminent or present failure, availability of parts and personnel, and budget.

Maintenance management generally employs one of two strategies: reactive maintenance and proactive maintenance. Both are acceptable maintenance processes and are often used in combination with one another. Yet, each involves a different amount of time and money. Organizations must be able to decide which methods to use and when.

Read: Keeping Assets Healthy: A Complete Guide to 4 Types of Maintenance

Reactive Maintenance Management

Some organizations choose a reactive maintenance management strategy, sometimes referred to in the industry as the firefighting method. With this strategy, maintenance teams wait until assets break before they take action to fix them.

As the term “firefighting” suggests, the circumstances surrounding this type of maintenance management are chaotic. Maintenance teams do not know when the next breakdown will happen, but spring into action once one occurs. Though this can place a burden on maintenance teams, especially when there are multiple “fires” to put out at once, it is a common way repairs are carried out.

The type of maintenance most associated with a reactive strategy is corrective maintenance (CM). Corrective maintenance tasks restore non- or under-performing assets to operational condition. They are typically performed in response to a critical failure or breakdown, though maintenance can be planned for less severe problems.

Proactive Maintenance Management

While some organizations take a “fix it when it breaks,” approach, others take a more proactive approach. They look to prevent failure by looking for signs of wear and tear before a problem occurs.

Proactive maintenance is performed in a number of ways. Assets are regularly inspected for signs of damage. Preventive measures, such as calibration, cleaning, and lubrication ensure assets function as expected. Pre-emptive part replacement reduces the chance of downtime caused by worn components.

Compared to reactive maintenance management, proactive maintenance requires more forethought and planning, but makes maintenance activities more predictable. The types of maintenance commonly associated with proactive maintenance are as follows:

• Preventive Maintenance (PM): Fixing small problems before failure can occur.
• Condition-based Maintenance (CbM): Using sensors to monitor an asset’s condition.
• Predictive Maintenance (PdM): Using sensors, historical data, and real-time data to predict when an asset will fail.

Maintenance Management: A Team Effort

As you have learned so far, maintenance management requires a lot of time, effort, and money to be effective. With so many resources to organize and manage, it would be hard to believe that a single person could manage maintenance alone – and you’d be right!

Maintenance management is a true team effort, involving many different people throughout the organization. Below are the most common roles that contribute to successful maintenance management.

Maintenance Managers

Maintenance managers, of course, lead the way when it comes to carrying out maintenance activities. They are primarily responsible for overseeing the installation, troubleshooting, repair, and maintenance of assets. This includes being in charge of the processes and resources that tie into performing maintenance, such as managing work orders, coordinating parts and labor, and planning and scheduling maintenance. At times, maintenance managers also perform maintenance work alongside their team.

Maintenance Technicians

Maintenance technicians carry out most of the maintenance work on a daily basis. They are the frontline, “boots on the ground” workers who complete the tasks assigned by the maintenance manager. Because they work closely with assets every day, technicians have a deep awareness of how to best care for them, what problems may arise, and how to respond.

In addition to performing maintenance, technicians are also responsible for documenting their work. This includes keeping a record of what was done, what parts were used, and how long the job took to complete. This data is used by others to improve maintenance planning, scheduling, and other decision-making.

Upper Management

Upper management and corporate executives are responsible for helping the organization hit their goals of increased profits and growth. As it relates to maintenance management, increased profitability can be achieved by lowering the costs maintenance incurs through labor and materials. Executives use the information they receive from the maintenance department to make strategic decisions related to standardization, budgets, and capital investments.

Other Departments

The maintenance team does not exist in a vacuum. Other departments, such as production, quality, and operations interact with – and rely on – the maintenance team to operate. These departments help to notify the maintenance team of ongoing or otherwise unnoticed maintenance needs. In return, the maintenance team provides them with functioning, reliable assets used for the production of goods or delivery of services. When things go wrong, these other departments rely on the maintenance team for help.

Maintenance Management Software

As you may have realized, maintenance management is complicated. Fortunately, there are tools like computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) software that simplify it.

A CMMS is a platform that gathers, stores, and organizes maintenance information in a central database. It is designed to manage maintenance activities and resources while keeping detailed maintenance records of all assets within an organization. With all of this data at their fingertips, industrial organizations can easily control their maintenance operations based on their maintenance strategy.

The CMMS supports all your needs related to managing work orders, assets, MRO inventory, planning and scheduling, maintenance requests, and reporting. Data stored in a CMMS is also used to help establish baselines and build asset maintenance histories. This information enables teams to analyze trends using key performance indicators (KPIs) and other reports, and identify areas of improvement.

Read our blog article, What is a CMMS? to learn more about maintenance management software.

FTMaintenance Maintenance Management Software

A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is the foundation of good maintenance management. A CMMS, such as FTMaintenance helps organizations maintain cost effective maintenance operations. In fact, companies that adopt a CMMS can improve their overall efficiency by up to 65%.

Whether you want to reduce machine downtime, save money on repairs, streamline your day-to-day workflow, or all of the above, a CMMS like FTMaintenance will help you reach these goals.

Learn more about how FTMaintenance helps manage maintenance activities by exploring our CMMS features and services.

The importance of maintenance management cannot be overstated. After all, the maintenance team has a hand in every finished good or service that is consumed. They make sure our power stays on, our clothes are woven correctly, and our food gets packaged on time. Without maintenance management, delivery of these products would be delayed and services would experience interruptions. The reasons listed in this article seek to highlight the importance of maintenance management.

5 Reasons Maintenance Management is Important

1. Growing Complexity

Today’s buildings and equipment are becoming more automated, and automation adds to complexity. In industrial and commercial buildings, the use of automated HVAC, electronic and pneumatic systems, auxiliary power, and special environmental technologies are becoming more and more common. The potential cost of breakdown to these critical systems and assets is becoming an increasing risk to facility and maintenance management. Even more worrisome, maintenance staffs are being asked to do more with less while systems continue to grow in complexity.

2. Competition

With competitive marketplace pressures increasing, building owners and facility managers are striving to find new and better ways to contain and control the cost of doing business. As a result of economic pressure, long neglected equipment maintenance and asset management is becoming recognized as another potentially productive, profitable field of management.

Today’s managers are focused on cutting equipment repair costs and improving the efficiency of maintenance and engineering departments. The importance of maintenance management is realized now more than ever.

3. The Potential Costs for Doing Nothing are High

Industry statistics show that maintenance can account for up to 60% of a plant’s controllable operating costs. When scheduled preventive maintenance is not followed, premature breakdown is a certain outcome. For older machines and equipment with considerable amount of wear and tear, not only is operation more risky but maintenance and repair costs are even higher.

Aside from direct repair costs, there are also the realities of work stoppage, damaged or defective product, missed business opportunities, strained client relationships due to production downtime, employee overtime, and emergency inventory purchasing.

4. Maintenance Efforts are Misguided

Misguided maintenance activities can be counter-productive and lead to unnecessary downtime.

Maintenance teams often perform work that is unnecessary, unproductive, or counter-productive. Preventive maintenance work on equipment that doesn’t need it leads to unnecessary downtime, labor costs, and parts usage.

Technicians often sacrifice wrench time for data entry and retrieval, status reporting, and processing other paperwork. Finally, incorrect re-assembly, misalignment, or other errors actually reduce equipment reliability.

5. The Old Ways Do Not Work Anymore

Historically, most systems for managing maintenance activities have been manual–everything from index cards and memo files to wall-mounted log boards. These methods are cumbersome, incomplete, and ineffective. What’s more, they are used inconsistently. This further reduces whatever minimal benefits they might have once provided. Computerized maintenance management is a much more robust and profitable method.

Make Maintenance Management Easy with FTMaintenance CMMS

It is clear that having an organized and efficient system of managing maintenance operations is a necessity in today’s industrial environment. FTMaintenance CMMS offers a full suite of maintenance management software features needed by maintenance professionals to organize and efficiently manage maintenance activities, monitor equipment life, and track maintenance costs. See these features in action for yourself — take a tour to get started.