The Health and Well Being of Your CMMS

When was the last time you took a good hard look at your computerized maintenance management software system and asked it these sorts of questions - What have you done for me lately? Did you help me prevent an equipment failure? Did you let me know that work orders were being completed without time and materials being tracked? When was the last time you notified me of an emergency work request while I was on vacation?

All of these questions, while very tongue and cheek, point to a major problem within the CMMS marketplace right now. Vendors come along, install the system, get you up and running and off you go! Well I'm here to tell you, unless you're exercising continual process improvement within your CMMS, you're missing opportunities. You're costing your organization money, not realizing the full potential of your CMMS and frankly, when it comes time to upgrade your system, you've failed again in not having a system that is 'up to date' with the latest best practices/patches/work flow, etc. The domino effect can shatter the bottom line of any organization...

It doesn't really matter what your CMMS is. Whether it is best in class products like SAP or IBM Maximo, or other smaller market (but still valuable) systems like FM Systems or Infor EAM - are you leveraging everything the product has to offer? Are you examining your business processes in such a way that you're consistently applying the available technology in order to improve on these processes? I can say that without question, an organization that prides itself on maintenance best practices and optimal use of their CMMS, they are leading the way in their respective industries.

The CMMS is the one part of your organization that realistically touches every aspect of your business - think about that statement - it affects people, materials, locations, assets, scheduling, planning, financials, vendor management - etc. And consider the cost - you've made a significant investment and you're not doing anything to nurture it? I'm not talking about what types of reports we can get out of the system, I'm talking about configuration of work flow, asset hierarchies, database triggers, email notifications, work order escalations, asset performance monitoring - the nuts and bolts stuff.

"To leave your CMMS unattended, not giving it the proper attention - you're made a decision that will impact your organization in a very negative way".

If anyone is interested in an analysis of your CMMS, business process and an honest assessment of where you are at with your CMMS - please reach out, I'd very much like the opportunity to speak with you about your concerns and see if we can't put together a road map to get you back on track. You can us by email at: contact@jfc-associates.com. We look forward to speaking with you about your CMMS goals and vision and where best practices can help you achieve success.