What is a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS)?
A Computerized Maintenance Management System, or CMMS, is a software package that helps businesses plan and manage every aspect of their maintenance department. CMMS software effortlessly generates and tracks work orders, monitors asset health, and creates efficient maintenance schedules.
The best CMMS solutions also have strong, built-in analytic components. A good CMMS like eMaint can even analyze condition monitoring data and alert maintenance teams when an asset develops a new fault. CMMS software plays a crucial role in asset lifecycle management and can drive data-backed decision-making about maintenance needs.
Beyond that, CMMS software can track inventory and spare parts across multiple worksites, monitor spending and labor hours, and help standardize maintenance workflows. For businesses that face quality or safety regulations, a CMMS makes it easy to pass audits and achieve ongoing compliance.
What Does a CMMS Do?
The central function of a CMMS is to store, organize, and analyze maintenance data. That includes:
- Work order data
- Asset health data
- Scheduling and labor availability
- Inventory and spare parts
- Costs and budgeting data
- Regulatory and safety compliance data
CMMS systems give teams the organizational tools they need to increase efficiency, standardize workflows, and extend asset lifespan. CMMS solutions provide critical insights into equipment performance and maintenance needs, supporting proactive maintenance strategies and enhancing operational reliability.
Many of today’s leading 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 ERP purchasing software and SAP, or tap into siloed production data from SCADA, PLC, and BMS systems. The best CMMS software, like eMaint, can even connect with condition monitoring sensors and software, giving teams the power of predictive maintenance.
What Are the Types of CMMS?
There is a range of CMMS solutions on the market, but they can generally be divided into two types: on-premise and cloud-based CMMS. But which one is right for your operation? It depends.
On-premise CMMS solutions usually involve a higher upfront cost. They also require more in-house expertise. That’s because the installation process includes setting up a firewall and other IT infrastructure so that the software works smoothly on your server. Users of on-premise CMMS solutions also must pay for upgrades or additional solutions.
The trade-off? On-premise CMMS may offer a higher level of control and customizability, making it attractive to some larger institutions.
Cloud-based CMMS solutions are subscription-based and tend to cost significantly less. They are also easier to scale. Most cloud-based CMMS software issues free updates for existing users and includes features to protect your data.
One of the chief benefits of cloud-based CMMS is the ability to access data remotely. Workers in the field can access and update work orders through mobile apps, and decision-makers can log in and review asset health data remotely.
Advantages of CMMS Software
CMMS software helps teams streamline and manage their maintenance processes. By storing and analyzing data, CMMS software also facilitates smart decision-making and enables managers to build ever-stronger maintenance programs.
The benefits of using CMMS include:
- Reduced downtime by implementing an effective preventive and predictive maintenance strategy
- Increased operational efficiency, including time savings on every aspect of scheduling, data entry, and reporting
- Extended asset lifespans and improved asset management, tracking, and analysis
- Compliance with safety and quality regulations
- Standardized maintenance workflows
- Increased work order completion rates
- Lower overall maintenance costs
- Increased productivity and lower labor costs
Disadvantages of CMMS
Every solution has a few drawbacks, and CMMS software is no exception.
For some users, implementing CMMS can be a challenge. Learning how to navigate the software, exploring the different functionalities, and training your team to use the new software are time–consuming processes.
Most businesses that implement a CMMS only use a few of the available features. That’s why eMaint built a special learning portal (eMaint University) designed to train users so they can make full use of their CMMS. It’s available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, so users in any time zone can take full advantage.
The result? Users achieve full implementation without the headaches of training and onboarding. That drives rapid adoption of some of eMaint’s best functionality. And very quickly, it translates to a sharp reduction in downtime, longer asset lifespan, and an overall increase in operational efficiency.
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.
Common Features of a CMMS
Modern CMMS software generally has all of the following capabilities:
- Work order management
- Create, assign, and complete work orders and work requests.
- Asset management
- Track assets, see their current status, and view detailed maintenance history.
- Preventive maintenance
- Schedule recurring PMs for assets and include tasks, procedures, and parts. Advanced CMMS platforms also offer interactive drag & drop calendars for simplified PM planning.
- Parts & inventory management
- Book spare parts for work orders and attach them to relevant assets. Monitor inventory levels and receive alerts when parts need to be reordered.
- Reporting & analytics
- Design reports of maintenance activities and build dashboards to gain visibility into key processes and KPIs.
- Mobile CMMS app
- Manage maintenance from the palm of your hand, from work orders to booking parts. Premium CMMS apps allow offline work that syncs later.
- Regulatory compliance
- Easily build audit dashboards to demonstrate compliance. Review and report on records stored in a comprehensive audit trail. Safeguard key actions with electronic signatures.
- Integrations
- Integrate your CMMS with your core business software, from SAP to Power BI, with API connections or through low-code integration. Tap into SCADA & PLC systems to access condition data.
- Predictive maintenance
- Connect to condition monitoring sensors and software to automate work orders based on condition data, evolving your strategy into predictive maintenance
- Multi-site capabilities
- Enterprise-friendly CMMS software gives you the ability to manage multiple sites, standardizing maintenance strategy and allowing for global reports. Multi-site CMMS platforms generally also allow you to work across languages, time zones, and currencies.