A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is only as good as the data in it. Bad maintenance data can disrupt operations and lead to costly mistakes, but even the best CMMS cannot fix underlying data management issues. To prevent data quality issues, it is critical to closely vet any maintenance data prior to importing it into the CMMS.
This article covers how to clean, prepare, and migrate data from its original source into the CMMS, ensuring accuracy from day one.
| This article is part of a series of articles related to maintenance management best practices. Read our other best practice articles: |
How to Clean Up and Prepare Data Before CMMS Migration
The eagerness or urgency to implement a CMMS often causes organizations to overlook critical data preparation. Skipping these steps can result in incomplete, duplicate, or incorrect records that undermine the system’s effectiveness. To avoid these problems, it’s important to follow a structured approach to cleaning and preparing your maintenance data before migration. The steps to migrate maintenance data to a CMMS typically involve:
- Determining what data to collect
- Selecting the data collection tool
- Prioritizing and collecting the key information
- Cleaning your maintenance data
- Preparing your data importation file
- Establishing good data entry practices
Following these steps ensures your maintenance data is accurate, consistent, and reliable, helping your team make better decisions and avoid costly mistakes.
Step 1: Determine What Maintenance Data to Collect
Maintenance data exists in various formats and locations, ranging from hand-written notes on a desk to paper work orders in a file cabinet, to data stored in spreadsheets or other computerized systems. The goal of data collection is to gather all relevant maintenance data and format it so that it can be easily organized, edited, and formatted for later importation.
Depending on your goals for the CMMS, not all maintenance data will or should be imported. Having too little information available will hamper use of the system, but too much data can be overwhelming. Think about your maintenance management goals and what information is required to achieve them.
For example, some organizations choose not to track MRO inventory, so information about parts can be omitted. There will be a minimum amount of data required for effective maintenance tracking, but not all information will be relevant. Collecting only the data you need will be a big timesaver.
Types of CMMS Data
CMMS software allows you to manage several types of maintenance data, each playing a role in effective maintenance management. Understanding what maintenance data you already have – and what data the CMMS allows – can help you determine what kinds of information to collect. The primary types of CMMS data are as follows.
Asset Data
Asset data refers to information about your physical assets and equipment. Asset records typically include the following data:
- Asset identification numbers: Unique identifiers that are used to track assets.
- Current condition: The asset’s operational status and overall health.
- Location: Where the asset is physically located within the organization.
- Operating specifications: Operating parameters, such as capacity, power requirements, safety standards, and other performance requirements.
- Downtime, meter readings, and other performance data: Relevant metrics related to the asset’s availability and reliability.
Work Order Data
Work order data captures the performance of maintenance activities, including what was done, who did it, and what resources were used, among other information. Work order data typically includes:
- Details: Essential data about the work order such as its unique number, completion status, priority, assignment, and relevant life cycle dates.
- Tasks: The specific actions taken to perform the work outlined by the work order.
- Parts and tools: The materials and supplies, and quantities of such, required to carry out the maintenance tasks.
- Labor resources: The people or organizations that performed the work and their labor hours.
MRO Inventory Data
MRO inventory data is the information related to your inventoried assets and consumables. Inventory data can include:
- Inventory identification numbers: Unique identifiers used to track MRO items.
- Stocking location: The exact location within a stockroom or other inventory location where parts are stored.
- Quantities: The level of stock on hand, allocated to work orders, and available to use.
- Procurement information: Information related to replenishing stock, such as reorder point, economic order quantity, and supplier information.
Labor Resource Data
Labor resources are parties that provide labor for an organization, whether it is an employee, vendor, contractor, or other service provider. Examples of labor data include:
- Labor resource information: The names of the labor resources.
- Role and skills: The job title, department, labor craft, type of services provided, and other applicable skill information.
- Certifications: Documentation of any formal training or certifications held by the labor resource.
- Labor costs: The hourly rate for work performed by a labor resource.
Maintenance History
Maintenance history is a record of all past maintenance activities. CMMS solutions automatically create a maintenance history using closed work order records. Some systems allow you to directly import historical work orders or use attachments to maintain history records.
Other Management Data
Management data provides essential insights that help maintenance managers and other decision-makers assess performance, control costs, and optimize operations. This data includes:
- Key performance indicators (KPIs): Measures of performance. Common KPIs include Mean Time to Repair (MTTR), Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), and maintenance backlog.
- Cost information: Information related to the overall expenses incurred by the maintenance team. For example, costs related to labor, parts and materials, and operations.
- Scheduling data: Information that outlines planned maintenance activities including task frequency, labor availability, and stock replenishment.
Step 2: Select the Data Collection Tool
Your maintenance data will ultimately need to be formatted according to the CMMS’s importation requirements. Most systems allow you to migrate maintenance data from spreadsheets to the CMMS or import flat file formats like CSV (comma-separated values) or text files (.txt files). Most organizations use Microsoft Excel® for data collection, though other tools may be used.
Step 3: Determine How Much Data to Collect
Collecting data on tens, hundreds, or even thousands of assets all at once is a painstaking effort. Instead, prioritize which assets will be imported first and what data should be recorded for each asset.
To reduce the burden of data entry, start by collecting key maintenance data on the most critical assets to business operations. Non-essential, “nice to have” information can be added at a later time.
Once critical assets are entered in the system, repeat the process for less-critical assets. Supplementary data can be entered manually, or updated via additional imports if the CMMS allows it.
Step 4: Clean Your Maintenance Data
As the saying goes, “garbage in, garbage out.” What this translates to is that if poor-quality maintenance data is entered into a system, expect poor-quality results. Your maintenance data is a valuable asset, so it’s important to ensure that the data is “clean” and error free.
Data cleaning, also referred to as data scrubbing or data cleansing, is the process of ensuring data is correct, consistent, and usable by fixing or removing data that is inaccurate, corrupted, incorrectly formatted, duplicated, or incomplete. After your data has been collected, use the following guidelines to clean up and prepare your data for CMMS migration:
- Remove any obsolete, outdated, or unused information
- Rename any records to follow a standardized numbering scheme
- Eliminate duplicated information
- Standardize record IDs according to a naming convention
- Remove extra blank spaces or special characters that may cause improper sorting
- Check spelling, correct typos, and ensure consistent capitalization
- Fill in missing data
- Verify that data, such as numbers and dates, are in the correct format as required by the CMMS
- Verify that data meets character limits
Step 5: Expand Your Dataset
During the data cleaning process, you may encounter gaps in your maintenance data. Now is a good time to add any extra data to the dataset. If you discover missing information after data importation, it can be entered manually. If your implementation timeline allows, you may also wish to collect data for non-critical assets as well.
Step 6: Prepare Your Data Import File
By now, your maintenance data is almost ready for migration. First, you will need to map your maintenance data to the appropriate fields in the CMMS database. Your CMMS vendor will provide with premade data import templates or instructions for formatting your data file.
Each CMMS has its own data file requirements regarding what data is required, data formats, and file formats. Work with your CMMS vendor if you have any confusion about terminology, file structure, or other formatting requirements.
Before you import data, take one last opportunity to review your data for any errors or inaccuracies. Once maintenance data is in the system, it may not be easy or quick to clear out. Minor errors can be corrected after importation, however.
Step 7: Establish Good Data Entry Practices
Your data preparation and cleaning efforts will all be for naught unless you establish good data entry practices to safeguard the integrity of your maintenance data. The last thing you want is for bad maintenance data to infiltrate your CMMS.
The data migration step of CMMS implementation is the perfect opportunity to review – or establish – data entry standards. Documenting and training users on these rules will help prevent inaccurate or incomplete data from making its way into the system.
One common way to standardize data entry is to develop an asset naming convention that sets rules for how records should be uniquely tracked in the CMMS. Using a defined set of rules to identify records makes them simple to interpret, easier to sort and search, and provides a consistent way to name new records.
Configuration options, such as the ability to set required data entry fields, helps avoid incomplete records from being created. In some systems, administrators can even control what type of data a field will accept. Discuss configuration options with the vendor during product setup.
Finally, train your employees on any new policies or procedures for using the system. If bad habits aren’t broken, you’ll be back to square one in no time.
Migrate Your Maintenance Data to FTMaintenance Select
Data quality issues can lead to far-reaching and costly consequences if not addressed before migration. By following the best practices in this article, you can feel confident that your maintenance data is accurate, complete, and ready to import.
FasTrak offers a range of data importation and entry services to make the transition to FTMaintenance Select seamless, helping your team get on track with trustworthy data and start realizing the benefits of your CMMS from day one. Request a demo of FTMaintenance Select today to learn more.