An Ounce of Prevention: Computerized Maintenance Management

The following article, by Thinkage Ltd. personnel appeared in Textile Rental magazine, March 2006.

Everyone knows maintenance is important, but often it flies under the radar. The only time it gains much attention is when vital equipment breaks down; then, all eyes are on the maintenance staff...until the problem is fixed, and maintenance falls off the radar again.

But maintenance can have a substantial effect on profitability. Equipment malfunctions reduce laundry flow-through; if deliveries are late, clients complain. Meanwhile, your personnel stand idle waiting for repairs to be finished, and may have to paid overtime to handle backlogs. If equipment can't be repaired, replacing it may be expensive...and of course, maintenance operations also cost money.

For these reasons, improving your maintenance efforts can provide significant returns. Good maintenance management makes sure that costs are minimized. It can also reduce losses due to equipment downtime.

A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) gives maintenance managers the information they need to make wise decisions. Different CMMS packages have different capabilities, but most cover the following basics:

• Problem tracking: documenting when things go wrong, how much downtime was involved, what work was done to correct it, making sure that problem reports don't fall through the cracks
• Cost tracking: how much you spend on labor, materials, spare parts, and equipment replacement...and exactly where each dollar goes
• Equipment tracking: specifications of your equipment, lists of the spare parts each unit needs, instructions on preventive maintenance, maintenance histories, and other useful data (e.g. schematic diagrams, if available)
• Inventory tracking: what spare parts you have on hand, where they're stored, and when more have to be ordered
• Work scheduling, especially preventive maintenance: making sure that equipment is inspected and serviced in accordance with the manufacturer's specifications

All these operations must be performed by your maintenance department, whether or not you're computerized. So what does computerization buy you? More reliability, less guesswork, and easier answers to hard questions.

Increased Reliability

When information is stored on paper, it tends to get lost. Problem reports go missing. Important information ends up in filing cabinets full of documents that no one ever reads. Messages don't get communicated, and things fall through the cracks. (Staff turnover can make this situation worse. When someone leaves the company, you may lose “institutional memory” of what was done when.)

With a good CMMS package, however, information is kept online in an easy-to-use, easy-to-search format. All your data is in one place, organized so you can quickly find the knowledge you need.

As an example of how a CMMS can provide better reliability in your operations, let's look at a common situation. You assign a worker several jobs to do in a day; one of the jobs takes longer than expected, so another job doesn't get done. By the time the worker gets back to the office, everyone else has gone home. The worker leaves a note, but it gets lost in the shuffle.

In some organizations, the maintenance manager may not discover that the job wasn't done. Later, there'll be an angry phone call or a piece of important equipment will break down. But with a CMMS, the computer can quickly provide a list of jobs that are still outstanding. When the manager arrives in the morning, the CMMS can immediately show what has and hasn't been done, making it possible for the manager to reassign the unfinished job.

Reliably dealing with repairs is crucial, but for maximum reliability in your laundry operations, you have to get proactive: preventive maintenance. Everyone knows that preventive maintenance is important—catching problems before they happen is better (and cheaper!) than trying to fix everything afterward. But scheduling preventive maintenance can be complex, especially if you have a lot of different machines with different maintenance schedules and requirements.

A CMMS will do the scheduling for you, taking into account all the differences and complications. You avoid the headaches of drawing up your own calendars; the computer does it for you. By following the schedule, you make laundry operations more reliable—better maintenance means less unplanned downtime, longer equipment life, and fewer complaints. Things just work the way they're supposed to.

And if things do go wrong, you've got nothing to hide. You've done the required preventive maintenance, and your CMMS has the records to prove it. Some insurance companies charge lower premiums to companies that have a CMMS; not only do such companies have fewer liability claims, but they pay less in damages because they can show that they did all the maintenance they were supposed to.

Less Guesswork

Guesswork may affect any aspect of maintenance. For example, workers trying to find the right spare part to fix a broken dryer may take a long time searching...especially if you have several storerooms and the workers have to guess which one holds the needed part. As another example of guesswork, how easy is it to determine which pieces of equipment are still under warranty and what the terms of the warranty are? Do you have to guess, or is there an easy way to find out quickly (without having to search through huge files of paper)?

Guesswork also applies to the process of trying to make decisions when you don't have the information you need. Suppose you're trying to decide whether to replace a piece of equipment because it's had a few problems. In order to make a solid decision, it would be nice to know exactly how often the equipment has needed repaired, how much the repairs cost (in parts, labor, and downtime), how much the replacement machine will cost, and so on. Even if you have all this information, the decision may not be easy...but without the details, you're just shooting in the dark.

A good CMMS provides workers and management with exactly the information they need—from the location of spare parts to the total cost of maintenance on a particular piece of equipment over a given period of time. For workers, this means an increase in productivity: less time wasted going from storeroom to storeroom looking for parts. (Of course, increased productivity can lower your operating costs.) For managers, this means that you can easily find the details you need, because your CMMS offers a complete picture of all your maintenance operation.

Easier Answers to Hard Questions

For maintenance managers, data from a CMMS doesn't just mean that you can make informed decisions. You can also justify your decisions to upper management and to clients. The CMMS provides facts and figures about exactly what you've done.

But a CMMS package can do more than just regurgitate data. It can organize and analyze. For example, you can compare maintenance costs from one unit to another, or between types of units, or between types of jobs. You can get an overall picture of repair costs organized according to the reason for the problem (for example, problems due to operator error vs. problems due to normal wear and tear). You can step back and get the big picture, or you can zoom in to the finest details.

A CMMS lets you fine-tune your operations based on actual observations. For example, some units may need a little more "babysitting" than others because of age, heavy use, or even just their location inside your building. If so, you can adjust the preventive maintenance schedule accordingly; you can also give extra instructions to workers so that they make more in-depth inspections of possible trouble areas. Your CMMS can help you determine the best way to use your resources.

On the other hand, the overview provided by a CMMS can tell you when not to perform maintenance. I've heard of one organization that put in a CMMS and found just how much they were spending to maintain a certain type of equipment—far more than the purchase price of the equipment. From that point on, they simply stopped doing work on that equipment; it was cheaper just to keep replacement units on hand and put them in if there was a breakdown.

The Bottom Line

Maintenance can be complex, but managing it doesn't have to be. A CMMS can provide managers with the information they need to make operations run more smoothly, with fewer problems and better use of resources.

CMMS aren't magic solutions that make all your troubles go away. However, they provide the means to organize your work and your information, so that nothing gets lost and you know where you stand. Better knowledge produces better decisions. It's that simple.