What is a CMMS?

A computerized maintenance management system is a CMMS software solution that helps you manage your maintenance processes and get your maintenance jobs done better or more cheaply.

And it will make your maintenance processes and maintenance jobs more predictable.

This blog post will explain:

• What Is a CMMS?
• What Are Maintenance Processes?
• What Are Maintenance Jobs?

CMMS

What is a CMMS?

A computerized maintenance management software solution that

• keeps fixed asset and inventory data up to date.
• enables the collection of machine condition data.
• tracks maintenance jobs and related information; and
• facilitates the maintenance operations and the management, realization, and support processes.

CMMS maintenance management software is used by industries, who want to keep their property, plant, and equipment in good working order and operations up and running round the clock.

The CMMS database is the core repository of maintenance data and information about the fixed assets and inventory items as well as work orders and tasks.

The ownership of maintenance information is critical to the business owners, directors, and top management, who must make well informed decisions about the replacements of current assets and investments in new ones.

Unlike on-premise CMMS modern cloud-based maintenance management systems also called as CMMS are delivered to customers via wireless data networks as a software service (cloud service). An example of a modern cloud-based maintenance management system ANEO Zero CMMS that has been developed by Aneo Software Oy from Finland.

Maintenance Processes

What Are Maintenance Processes?

The European EN17007 standard groups the maintenance process into three types of processes:

• A management process,
• Realization processes; and
• Support processes.

The maintenance processes descriptions are defined by EN17007 as follows:

"A management process that establishes policy and strategy, defines the organization, assigns responsibilities, negotiates budgets, manages actions, analyses data and leads a continuous improvement process!

"Realization processes which are the reason of being the overall process and produce the expected results. They include preventive and corrective maintenance which share a common process including preparation, scheduling, and performing tasks on items, and a third process for improving reliability and maintainability of items."

"Support processes which are necessary for the realization and management processes."

SOURCE: EN17007

Maintenance Jobs

What Are Maintenance Jobs?

Strategyn Founder Tony Ulwick introduced a Jobs-To-Be-Done (JTBD) framework that turns the fundamentals of jobs-to-be-done thinking into an innovation practice. Same thinking can be applied to maintenance jobs.

The Job Map™

SOURCE: STRATEGYN

Tony Ulwick claims that all jobs have the same 8 steps and I think that maintenance jobs have them, too:

1. Define the maintenance job and create a work order, determine your customers goals, and plan resources such as maintenance teams, tools, and equipment required to get the maintenance job done.
2. Locate the information, spare parts and materials needed to do the maintenance job, and make them available for a pickup or deliver them to the work area.
3. Prepare the work area and set up the environment to make it safe and easy to do the maintenance job.
4. Confirm that your customer and maintenance team are ready to do the maintenance job, and the necessary spare parts and materials are readily available for the maintenance job execution.
5. Execute the maintenance job, add the spare parts and materials used to do the job to the maintenance tasks, and document the work in progress as well as report results, and the working time spent to do the job.
6. Monitor the results and assess whether the maintenance job was executed successfully.
7. Modify the maintenance work orders to improve execution of upcoming maintenance tasks.
8. Conclude and finish the corrective maintenance job or prepare to get the next upcoming preventive maintenance job done in the future.

Read more about the jobs-to-be-done framework from the Harvard Business Review article, The Customer-Centered Innovation Map, by Lance A. Bettencourt and Anthony W. Ulwick from the Harvard Business Review Magazine (May 2008).