What is CMMS Software?
A CMMS, or Computerized Maintenance Management System, is a software solution designed to streamline maintenance processes and improve asset management within an organization. It enables maintenance managers to schedule, track, and analyze work orders, inventory, and maintenance tasks efficiently. By utilizing a CMMS, organizations can reduce downtime, extend asset life, optimize labor resources, and enhance overall maintenance operations.
A CMMS serves as a command center for maintenance and reliability programs. It’s also a centralized database for storing key data. Maintenance teams use CMMS software to track their work and gain insight into machine health and reliability, making it ideal for managing industrial facilities where machine assets are critical to production.
CMMS software optimizes the use, availability, and life span of equipment, machinery, fleets, infrastructures, facilities, or operations.
Today’s CMMS solutions are cloud-based and offer innovative features like a mobile CMMS app, regulatory compliance tools, and multi-site or multilingual capabilities. They can also integrate with apps like ERP purchasing software, or tap into siloed production data from SCADA, PLC, and BMS systems. Leading CMMS platforms can even connect with condition monitoring sensors and software, giving teams the power of predictive maintenance.
CMMS system, solution, platform, and software are all synonymous terms – they all refer to digital systems for maintenance management.
Organizations can harness the power of CMMS software to save time, simplify their work, prevent downtime, reduce maintenance costs, and strengthen the reliability of their assets.
Computerized
Nowadays, everything is on computers. It was only a matter of time until the clipboard and pen of yesteryear were discarded for modern technologies. The best CMMS software providers will help you integrate your previous hard-copy, paper trail into the computerized interface. This way, no data is lost when migrating to a computerized maintenance management software solution.
Maintenance
No computer available has the function and capacity to complete maintenance as quickly, efficiently, and precisely as skilled labor. Performing preventive maintenance, or routine inspections, or ensuring a work order is completed is still a job for maintenance teams. Instead, a CMMS helps teams schedule work orders, gauge parts and supplies inventories, and use data to make maintenance decisions.
Management
A CMMS helps front-line workers execute work orders. But it helps management plan, schedule, and report on work being done. It allows leadership to create forecasts as well as report back on completions, compliance, audits, or other maintenance KPIs.
System
Computerized maintenance management system software can’t replace workers. However, it can augment their current practices and improve the efficiency of labor completion. eMaint CMMS fits in with current maintenance practices and processes, allowing users to customize features to their needs.
Computerized maintenance management system software helps teams manage their day to day. It also helps teams integrate new maintenance solutions, such as condition monitoring.
How does CMMS software work?
Among other things, a CMMS system functions as a work order software to track maintenance orders and schedule tasks. It helps maintenance teams manage their workflows and minimize downtime. Through integrations with vibration sensors and other condition monitoring tools, a CMMS and its database also lets teams keep tabs around-the-clock on machine health and conditions, so they can implement condition-based maintenance.
Other key CMMS integrations, like Enterprise Resource Planning software, can help maintenance teams connect their operations to the purchasing and inventory functions used elsewhere in an organization. While maintenance and reliability teams may spend their time focus on keeping machines running, today’s organizational environments make it must that a CMMS can communicate seamlessly with these other business systems.
Today’s maintenance managers rely on CMMS systems to level up their maintenance programs, streamline processes, and improve tracking and analysis of maintenance KPIs. A CMMS can also enable accurate documentation for maintenance activities, which is vital for heavily regulated industries subject to audits.
In the end, a CMMS is a database, and information within supports a variety of functions across different teams. Those in operations or finance can benefit from visibility into inventory status or costs, supply contracting, and other maintenance functions.
A CMMS can help organizations manage and streamline:
- Resources and labor
- Asset lifecycle
- Work order prioritization and scheduling
- Preventive maintenance
- Materials and inventory
- Audits and compliance tracking
- Reporting and dashboarding
- Mobile maintenance functionality
- Condition monitoring
- Customized training and support
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What are the benefits of using a CMMS software?
There are many efficiency and lifecycle benefits from implementing and using computerized maintenance management system software. Overall, it allows teams to align their maintenance practices and activities with other departments and business goals. When you have a system that allows cross-departmental sharing of data, everyone’s job gets a little more efficient.
Some of top benefits of a cmms software include:
Healthy and Safe Environments
In line with global, national, state, or local regulations, a CMMS can improve safety, health, and environmental issues. When assets are properly maintained and in a timely fashion, they’re less likely to have a failure that endangers workers. Get reports on incidents, defects, correction action histories, and process change management.
Workflow Visibility and Work Order Management
Work order software allows teams to visualize actions through dashboards and reports, helping every level of worker assess the current status and improve work order completion rates. Maintenance teams can quickly determine where an asset is, what parts are needed, and who should perform what work and when.
Mobile Workforce
Keeping field workers on the go can be a difficult and pricey endeavor. However, the best software offers advanced mobility connectivity for users who rarely need to come back to the office. Deploy teams remotely using a CMMS that supports mobile workers.
Automation and processes
There are so many process that are prime for automation:
- Inventory reorders
- Scheduling shifts
- Assigning work orders by availability
Transitioning to a CMMS database allows users to automate many processes. Automation saves time, reduces human error, and increases efficiency.
Asset Lifecycle Visibility
CMMS software allows teams to track and manage asset health and lifecycle from pre-installation planning and engineering to decommissioning. When you know what the active status is of your assets, you can better plan, schedule, and perform work.
The Road to Prescriptive Maintenance
Software helps teams move from reactive through preventive and predictive maintenance to a prescriptive maintenance strategy. By integrating data from sensors, usage statistics, and more, maintenance teams gain visibility into asset health. Then, software can make AI-enhanced analytics on what actions to take and when.
Regulatory Compliance and Audits
With compliance regulations from local, regional, state, national and global organizations, it can be hard to keep up with audits. However, a CMMS can ensure regulatory compliance and creates the digital paper trail that most compliance audits look for to determine how well an organization has met all necessary standards. Health and safety, IT, energy and environmental management and quality management standards are a few examples that apply to a range of industries.