Mine Business Intelligence From Your CMMS

Business Intelligence (BI) analysis is crucial to an operation’s success. In short, this analysis is the harnessing of software to mine an organization’s raw data. Analyzing that data through the use of reporting and analytics can support critical business decisions.

In the maintenance world, a computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) system plays a vital role in collecting useful data. Technical experts at Mapcon Technologies Inc. (Johnston, IA, mapcon.com) point to five areas where these systems can help your organization analyze and understand its valuable business intelligence and put it to use.

Inventory auditing

It’s important for maintenance personnel to know how many parts are needed and when they need to be reordered. By running an inventory usage report within a CMMS, users can find out exactly how many individual parts were used over a specific period of time. Once that information is gathered, a minimum number, or reorder point, of parts can be established to trigger an automatic reorder that, in turn, would be approved and sent to the vendor. This can ensure that stock-outs are no longer a problem and, accordingly, prevent downtime.

Predictive analysis

For maintenance departments, being able to predict when equipment will fail is a big deal. A CMMS can determine, based on meter or gauge readings and historical data, when a machine is most likely to break down. Take, for example, a machine that breaks a belt approximately every 1,000 hr. Since a CMMS would display that trend, a technician could set up a preventive–maintenance (PM) task to change the belt every 950 hr. By using a CMMS to predict when the machine will break a belt, downtime can be avoided.

Preventive-maintenance compliance

Since PM information is stored within a CMMS, it is easy to analyze. When reviewing such data, managers can break it down by type of work done, employee, area, or other metrics, and make necessary changes. For example, by determining why certain PMs weren’t completed on time, they could take steps to hire new workers or provide additional training to current employees.

Failure analysis

A CMMS stores an extensive amount of historical data, including repairs, for each piece of equipment in a plant. Therefore, when personnel notice that machines have required numerous repairs, they can analyze stored failure codes to help determine root causes. They can also review CMMS information on when repairs were done, associated downtime, and PM activities, among other things, to devise corrective measures. Say a technician discovers that a machine breaks more belts in the winter due to colder temperatures. With this information, he or she could plan ahead and turn up the heat in the area or order more belts to have on hand during winter months.

HR (human resource) reporting

Reports within a CMMS can be run for things other than maintenance-repair information. Many software programs can run HR-related reports, i.e., an open work order by craft or shift report. This capability allows managers to view the workload according to shift or craft, something that can be beneficial when it comes to hiring decisions.

For more information from Mapcon Technologies on this and other CMMS topics, visit mapcon.com.