Computerized maintenance management systems, more commonly known as CMMS in industry, are used to manage operations and maintenance in the utility infrastructure, oil and gas, renewable energy and manufacturing sectors. The right CMMS streamlines maintenance data to simplify facilities management, optimizing maintenance and improving uptime for critical services.
When leadership reviews their asset management strategy, relevant information needs to be easily accessible: A CMMS tracks data on physical assets and their condition, generates work orders when repairs are due, and schedules preventative maintenance.
Management software simplifies operations & maintenance (O&M) by centralizing data and making it easy to query or report upon.
Using a CMMS in industry increases efficiency and provides several other advantages, including cost control, downtime reduction, procurement given past failure rates, and improving employee safety by documenting donning of mandatory Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).
In this article, you’ll learn the top five reasons why you should use a CMMS in industry, why organizations need a CMMS, and features to look for in CMMS solutions.
Top 5 Reasons to Use CMMS Industry Solutions
Other than streamlining data and making maintenance easier, your CMMS in industry should have on-the-go capabilities that make work for remote teams easier, multiple language options, and inclusive design.
1. Application with Offline Capabilities
Those who manage maintenance know better than most that utility assets, extractive industry or large solar arrays are often rural if not very remote. Thus, any kind of other communications signal can’t be relied upon (which defeats web-based CMMS solutions). The right CMMS, like 60Hertz’s software solution, offers an offline capability that is still completely usable and submits data when the user is back within network range.
A CMMS designed with mobility in mind also means that the CMMS design should be uniform across devices, guaranteeing ease of use for technicians in the field on personal or company devices.
2. Multi-Language Capacity
Maintenance teams may speak different languages, and it’s important to guarantee they have access to the information they need regardless of their preferred working language.
Depending on your sector, your employees may enter the workforce with limited English language skills. Users should be able to choose the language they are strongest in — primarily to ensure their safety, ability to follow a maintenance Standard Operating Procedure, or surface issues.
Job performance can be colored by lack of comprehension of protocols rather than actual talent or training. Multi-language capacity in a CMMS—which 60Hertz’s software offers—facilitates a single tool for your global operations.
3. Inclusive Design
Just as important as offline capabilities and multi-language capacity, your CMMS should also offer inclusive design—something that’s easily adoptable and deployable across multiple teams. This means that your CMMS industry solution should have a visual presentation that’s easy to understand, guaranteeing a product that’s easy to pick up and use.
With many field techs aging out of today’s workforce, and high employee turnover, the rising generation expects work tools that are modern, clear, and visually appealing.
Legacy field service tools offer limited design aesthetics and are feature-poor, leaving your work crew uninspired if not restrained in their ability to elevate issues they observe or even catch basic alarms. 60Hertz’s CMMS is easy to learn, and ready for use.
Predictive Maintenance Helps You Avoid Cost Overruns
Learn how an enterprise-grade CMMS helps
4. Maintenance Automation
While supervisor review of work orders is important if not imperative in some cases, maintenance automation eliminates delays and mistakes to automatically schedule or generate work orders.
Whether the trigger for an auto-generated work order is based on asset run-hours (every 500 hours), calendar time (semi-annual maintenance), or based on an event (from incoming alarm from DAS or SCADA) to high priority field generated tickets.
Maintenance automation dramatically can reduce your Mean Time To Resolution and therefore increase revenue production.
5. Systems Integration
Consolidate data from multiple sources into a single CMMS so that users can access necessary information at one source.
Judicious decision-making about integrations with your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) or the host of asset supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) alarms or monitoring/control solutions is critical. It’s not always worth it.
The time in which it will take to realize and quantify value through integrations must be realistically evaluated. Integrations streamline workflows; however at times relying on data downloads or manual processes may in fact be prudent given team-size, organizational resources, and business goals.
Prioritizing CMMS an integration with your live monitoring data or similar telemetry, then you can build smart-automations and triggers which deliver more quantifiable value fastest. 60Hertz’s CMMS offers streamlined integration with important data.
CMMS in Industry: Which Sectors Benefit from CMMS Software
Industries in which operations and maintenance are part of service execution can benefit from using a CMMS. Utility services, such as water and wastewater, can especially benefit, considering that in the US, in 2020, the average age of water pipes was 45 years old. Proper maintenance can support asset longevity, and the first step is adequate planning.
1. Clean Energy
Kicking off our CMMS industry review, the clean energy sector benefits strongly from using a CMMS for activities from solar module cleaning, wind gearbox maintenance, Battery Energy System Storage (BESS) testing, corrective actions like inverter replacements, or semi-annual testing of back-up generators at a microgrid.
In early decades of solar and batteries, it was thought that maintenance was synonymous with monitoring energy assets and that renewables needed very little maintenance.
However, the sector has largely discovered the importance of frequent human maintenance interventions, even at the C&I scale (think breweries, bottling plants, landfills, or municipal and school buildings).
Preventative maintenance of the host of Distributed Energy Resources improves Return On Investment, asset uptime, and attainment of carbon reduction goals modeled.
2. Utility Asset Maintenance
CMMS industry solutions are important for substations, poles & wires, transformers and microgrids. The host of Distributed Energy Resources increasingly common for utility operators to take on definitely need a maintenance tool to increase the longevity of asset life, improve your personnel’s labor efficiency, and manage preventative maintenance.
You’ll be able to access and run reports in real-time for your management. Mobile access also simplifies working on the go.
Easy access to up-to-date information also further reduces potential downtime—especially critical for utilities during the months wherein extreme weather (ice storms, hurricanes, wind events or spring snow) makes utility infrastructure particularly vulnerable.
3. Remote Telecommunications
For teams working at a distance in remote telecommunications, a CMMS offers an offline mode that can be used wherever.
For remote telecom and other industries, a CMMS also provides troubleshooting guides, early warnings of potential equipment failure, and supports local agent response to supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) alarms. These alarms cover power supply problems and network issues.
4. Water CMMS
Though some may believe that water and wastewater utilities cover the same assets, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Water utilities deal with the water that flows into your home. Water treatment plants draw water from the ground or other surface-level resources, and make it drinkable.
Using a water CMMS ensures effective asset tracking, so maintenance is scheduled to ensure continued component operation. Working with a CMMS also helps you stay compliant with regulation.
5. Wastewater CMMS
In contrast with water treatment plants, a wastewater treatment plant collects sewage and other waste, cleans it, and turns it into environmentally safe water. The nutrient-rich waste solids left over from this process are often used as fertilizer.
Offering the same benefits to wastewater, a CMMS also streamlines work order management, helping decision-makers plan for asset maintenance on time. Automating work order creation reduces maintenance costs and potential downtime, keeps systems prepared for inspections, and makes resource management more efficient.
As with water maintenance, maintaining and demonstrating water quality via a maintenance software in real time ensures the safety and high standards for municipal water or effluent.
Learn how a CMMS helps with infrastructure management with these blogs: |
Why Organizations in the Energy Industry Need CMMS
Choosing to work with a CMMS makes planning easier by providing a structure for power companies: You’ll be able to divide up your maintenance backlog and put an action plan in place. You’ll also better control costs, having a better overview of inventory management and how much you need to order, vs. what you have.
Another benefit to consider is the impact efficiency equipment has on your bottom line: Assets that are well maintained are more energy efficient. Proactive, planned maintenance saves your bottom line from reactive care, which can mean ballooning costs.
You’re also able to standardize workflow, so you can create maintenance checklists, reporting templates and other tools.
The Importance of Maintenance Operations
Maintenance management, also known as maintenance as a service, prioritizes the upkeep of essential assets to keep your services running smoothly. Maintenance operations are also critical in maintaining employee safety, and help protect the environment.
The approach to maintenance management can be dealt with in several ways. Since you’re already familiar with preventative maintenance, you should also be aware of different approaches, including:
- Proactive maintenance: When data is gathered and used to get ahead of potential equipment failures;
- Perspective maintenance: With a similar focus on looking ahead, prescriptive maintenance plans assess changes in asset condition and makes recommendations for problem-solving;
- Detective maintenance: More oriented toward finding a root cause when an asset breaks down, detective maintenance uses the data from these findings and puts it into preventative maintenance planning; and
- Run-to-failure maintenance: A form of reactive maintenance, run-to-failure aims to minimize the costs associated with equipment failure, such as machines with parts that can be disposed of rather than replaced.
A dependable, easy-to-use CMMS, like 60Hertz’s software solution, simplifies the maintenance process by making data easily accessible.
Work with a CMMS Right for Your Industry
With clients in nine countries (and across North America) and trusted by more than 30 utilities, project developers, and service companies, 60Hertz Energy’s CMMS saves clients an average of $61,256 per year. When you work with 60Hertz, you get offline-first and mobile-first capacity, a multi-language tool with inclusive design and straightforward systems integration.
Make data collection easy with 60Hertz’s CMMS—an on-the-go, accessible software that provides both custom and standard forms.
Choose an easily deployable CMMS, tailored to the complexities of your industry.
