COMPUTERIZED MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM (CMMS)

COMPUTERIZED MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT SYSTEM

CMMS techniques become more necessary than ever to ensure productivity, quality, timely delivery, and availability, low cost, safety particularly in lean manufacturing. CMMS are increasingly being used to manage and control plant and equipment maintenance in modern manufacturing industries.

Developing and implementing a maintenance program is a difficult process that suffers from many problems. Its often suffers from lack of a systematic and consistent methodology. In addition, since the process of developing the program relates to different parties with interests in maintenance, it becomes difficult to achieve all round satisfaction of these parties and at the same time achieve the objectives of the company. In deriving these objectives maintenance managers usually try to achieve multiple, and sometimes, conflicting objectives such as maximizing throughput, availability, and quality subject to constraints on production plan, available spares, manpower, and skills

CMMS Definitions

The following are various definitions given by different authors and organizations. They are:

A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) provides historic information for various types of work; availability of materials; costs by job, facility or type of work, and much more. It can increase effectiveness of planning, scheduling, and cost tracking by as much as 50 percent. In addition, it will establish an electronic information warehouse, which will be available for many other queries and reporting, at no additional cost4. CMMS is a centralized repository for maintenance related information. Ideally, a CMMS provides an easy to use interface to modules tying together purchasing, work requests, work orders, equipment records, labor resources, inventory, and history of work orders. The effectiveness of a CMMS depends on how well the software accomplishes this integration, the acceptance of the user community, and the quality of the maintenance data loaded into the CMMS. A

CMMS is a powerful tool that simplifies day-to-day activities in maintenance, planning and scheduling, inventory control and purchasing. It also provides event and history tracking facilities that will enable the overall performance to be monitored and optimizes the equipment and personnel resources.

Need for CMMS

Maintenance departments are under tremendous pressure to provide more information faster, and at a lower cost to the company. At the same time many companies have reduced the staff to the bare minimum. Maintenance professionals are presented with more difficult challenges today than at any previous point. The biggest obstacle of all confronting maintenance professionals is being forced to do more with fewer resources. Maintenance departments must deliver superior service, comply with regulatory requirements and provide detail financial accountably all within the confines of limited and/or reduce budgets. In order to meet challenges, maintenance professionals are arming with economical computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS). Maintenance organizations can improve their agility and cost effectiveness through implementing and deploying a latest generation CMMS. CMMS are now a necessary part of managing and controlling assets, plant and equipment maintenance in modern manufacturing facilities management and service industries. CMMS are

designed to provide today’s maintenance professionals with the tools needed to reduce downtime, increase equipment life, maximize productivity, lower overall costs and simplify the maintenance process. The importance of CMMS has increased dramatically in the past few years, especially in resource-based companies such as mining, oil and gas, pulp and paper, utilities, and heavy manufacturing. This is because lean companies realize the enormous savings potential due to improved equipment reliability, lower spare parts inventory, and higher operator/maintainer productivity. The more sophisticated CMMS packages provide excellent analysis tools for lean manufacturers to identify problem areas, root causes, and actions required. Many problems can be avoided in the first place through various modules of CMMS.

The following characteristics should be in CMMS

·         Minimal learning curve required.

·         Quick easy to set-up.

·         Easy to use with powerful features.

·         Minimal time required for operating.

·          Bullet proof software system that requires no computer experience to install or maintain even on a network.

 Basic Components of CMMS

The following flowchart (fig.1) highlights the basic components of CMMS. Work Order is the key feature of the system. It consists all of the labor data, materials data, contractor data, preventive maintenance data that is written against a piece of equipment (or a facility or a building etc). The information collected is then stored in a database called the equipment history. It is here that all of the data is drawn to reproduce all of the reports needed by the organization to manage the equipment or assets. The CMMS most basic function is to organize all equipment information into a workable database.

  

Implementation

The actual implementation of the CMMS was performed in two parts: warehouse and procurement process, and work control process. During each conversion, a partial changeover was not considered. This total conversion worked only because of the modifications made to the system by each team prior to implementation and because all training was conducted prior to the actual implementation.

Implementing a CMMS is a systematic process of evaluating the correct order of application implementation. This process can be conducted if the knowledge base of the new CMMS is well known along with the knowledge of current and future maintenance operations. Therefore, the first step in implementing a CMMS is to take all-available training (user and system administrator) to become an "expert" on how the system works and can potentially be modified. Next, a phased implementation has to be developed, reviewed, modified, and accepted by management. The following phased implementation:

a. Test and validation: The CMMS was tested against all established requirements to assure that it would perform all maintenance processes. The entire work control process (with all appropriate data loaded) was tested to understand how the new CMMS administered work from one application to another.

b. Decisions: After a thorough understanding of the system (through training) and a general understanding of how the CMMS administers work were achieved, decisions had to be made to merge the old system and set up the new system. The biggest decision was how to define and set up the equipment assemble structure (EAS). The EAS is the foundation of a CMMS, and a good deal of time was spent defining maintenance tracking levels. All installed facilities systems were defined to the lowest level of equipment maintenance that was to be tracked. This defined what equipment records. The greatest contribution of the EAS is the ability to track maintenance costs at the equipment level (then roll-up them to the system level) in order to perform optimal replacement analysis.

c. Modifications: Every application in the CMMS was reviewed for its applicability to the existing work control process. Each team learned every application, evaluated its functionality, and made recommendations to modify the application (field modifications or additional table requirements) to better fit. Modifications were then made to the application. This approach insured that the existing work control process was included in the CMMS prior to implementation.

d. Training: Training of all users was developed and conducted by in-house personnel because they had the system knowledge combined with the work control process knowledge (both current and future). The training program was broken into two groups: inventory and purchasing, and work control. The inventory and purchasing group consisted of all users responsible for procuring and storing maintenance materials (excluding work control flow through the CMMS). The implementation team trained all planners and supervisors on work order flow through the CMMS (excluding inventory and purchasing). Users learned the application and then learned how the application was going to be used.

e. Warehouse and procurement: The Materials management and purchasing modules were the first to be implemented because the CMMS is set up to check for materials before a work order can be moved to in-progress status. All stored material data was converted into the inventory database and procurement personnel started submitting purchasing orders to the Purchasing Department. Most inventories "bugs" were worked out prior to full implementation of the work control process.

f. Work control: The work control implementation consisted of a comprehensive use of most of the applications in the CMMS. Work control flow through the CMMS consisted of work order generation, receivable of new work order, detail of work order, assignment of work order, posting of craft daily time, completion of the work order, and closing of the work order.

g. Equipment: The equipment application is the foundation of a CMMS and great care should be taken to correctly set up this application. Each piece of equipment was then placed into the correct location of the defined EAS with the appropriate priority assigned to it. Then the correct equipment specification screen was assigned to the equipment for additional name plate data acquisition.

h. Job plans: Generic preventive maintenance (PM) job plans were written for all equipment types that require PM. These job plans would serve as a template when the PM Masters were to be created. The objective was to build a library of job plans that could be used in future PM development.

i. Preventive maintenance: Preparing a PM Master in a CMMS takes a great deal of effort, but yields many benefits. A PM Master will automatically generate work orders when they are due and specify appropriate operations, materials, labor, and specialty tool requirements. The warehouse will always know what materials are needed for PM and when they are needed.

j. Failure analysis: Tracking why equipment failed and how to fix it is the final leg of the implementation project.

 How to avoid the pitfalls

Most mistakes are made when the basic information is entered into the system. Basic information answers such questions as "What is a piece of equipment?" "What is a part?" and "How is preventive maintenance handled?". More importantly, "How much detail gives us the information necessary to run the department?" What is a piece of equipment? Is it the cost, the critical nature, or a life/safety issue that determines that the piece needs to be set up in the system as a unique entity? Is it anything over

N82, 500 or maybe the cost is less but it would have a significant impact on the operation (like the lock on the front door) or a fire extinguisher for safety? A policy needs to be created defining what a piece of equipment is Parts vs. equipment. Parts are typically items that make up a piece of equipment and are replaced, not repaired. Disposable filters are typically parts. Electric motors can be both. Smaller electric motors are replaced as parts. As an example, a ¼ hp motor most likely would be a part, while a25 hp motor probably would be a piece of equipment. Generally, setting up a ¼ hp motor as a piece of equipment would create a cumbersome situation for maintenance history Preventive maintenance. The caution with setting up PMs is again the amount of detail you need. As an example, an air handling unit can be set up as a number of pieces of equipment (fans, motors, condensers, etc.) with each having a separate PM or it can be set up as one piece of equipment with a number of PM tasks. Typically setting the unit up as one piece of equipment reduces the number of work orders or pieces of paper the system generates. I have been at sites where the volume of paper generated for PM work orders stalled or exterminated the project. An option to reduce some of the paper yet get the detail is to set up the PMs on the larger unit (the air handling unit) but then do the corrective work against individual pieces of equipment (fans, motors, condensers, etc.). People are very good at their jobs and now are being asked to change; how do you get them as comfortable with the new process as they were with the old one? Training and practice is the only way they will overcome the natural human resistance to change. There is no magical solution, but the correct timing and quality and quantity of training is crucial.

Shortcomings of TPM (Total Preventive Maintenance)

The TPM concept is simple and obvious, but there are some reported shortcomings. Managers tend to focus on early results rather than activities aimed at reducing losses in the long run. Improving personnel and changing the corporate culture is more easily said than achieved. The traditional cultural division between operator and maintenance, “you bend it, we mend it”, must be altered by mutual consent. Continuous improvement means data analysis. Often data are collected but not analyzed.

There is a need to find a less time-consuming method that is also precise. While its philosophy is sound, its implementation lacks focus, and a systems approach that is compatible with different environments. Hence, an appropriate approach is presented. This approach is aimed at extending TPM in an effective and efficient model, rather than contradicting it. In addition, this approach addresses maintenance practice in both the strategic and operational domains. The trend in recent maintenance literature seems to emphasize the cultural difference between the Japanese culture and the Western. pointed out the cultural differences between the Japanese and the West, stressing the Japanese affinity for small groups and consensus decisions17. It confirms this and emphasizes that the work ethic is very strong in Japan, coming before self and family. Also, in an article18 about uses and limits of TPM, the authors of the article conclude that TPM succeeds not because of its systems or engineering techniques but because of its attention to the management of human factors. Any TPM program is supposed to go through four stages: self-development, improvement activities, problem solving and autonomous maintenance. However, it seems that most groups do not transit from stage two to stage three. They die before they are really grown up. An analogy of adopting TQM and TPM is of having a good brain and strong muscles. It seems, however, that a nerve system (data and decision analysis) is missing in this analogy. Through personal experience, industrial collaboration, and research, the author has formulated the opinion that while TPM is obviously a step in the right direction, it is clear that there is a need for a revised, ``appropriate'', approach regarding TPM. There is also need for a more appropriate approach that is dynamic, practical, focused, adaptable, and integrated with other functions of the organization. Need for a revised, appropriate, approach the above literature survey shows that TPM in its pure form is not totally applicable to Western industry. TPM appears to be in danger of being just an activity centered management theory rather that a result driven approach.

Therefore, there is a need for a revised approach to TPM, an appropriate one. The revised approach is intended to be keyed to specific results, rather than to too large scale and diffused objectives: an approach that is a management thought process rather than a thing unto it. It is not intended to contradict TPM philosophy, but to complement it. The proposed approach is a further step that puts a concept into practice. This revised approach is intended to account for differences from the ideal case, which embodies ``best'' practices yet, which can be ``tailored'' to yield an appropriate system.