Evaluating a CMMS (maintenance system)

Evaluating a maintenance system or CMMS program is a tough job. Functions are difficult to compare. It can be difficult to calculate price and total cost. And how do you really know what you need?

We have listed 5 steps to help you!

1. Knowledge of maintenance

A maintenance system is not like a business system. It is built to be used as little as possible. Your technicians should be out to improve operational reliability, not handle work orders or need to look to find the right information for a spare part. It requires a deep understanding and knowledge of maintenance and the challenges that a maintenance department has.

2. Flexibility

You cannot test all situations and future organizational changes in advance. Therefore, you should invest in a system that is flexible enough to meet your possible needs. Think about your routines and workflows. Can the system support all the steps in your workflow? And your key figures, can you change these? Split, follow up over time and create new ones?

When you realize that flexibility is of great importance, you should ask yourself the question; do I need a consultant for each change or can we make the change ourselves? Many system vendors receive the most revenue from consulting and programming your system. Given the price, configurations tend to decrease over time, leaving you with a system that no longer supports how you work. On the other hand, if you can do the entire configuration yourself, then you can fine-tune your system when needed, from every aspect of your business.

3. User friendly

A concept of dependability centered maintenance is difficult to evaluate! Each system vendor will say that their system is the most user-friendly that anyone has created. You will need serious tests. Consider all aspects of user-friendliness: Your technicians will finish jobs quickly. They need to find information quickly. At the same time, you want to get high quality information. You want it to be intuitive so that your operators understand how they create a bug report, that the manager can easily cave in the statistics and external technicians want to report on their jobs.

Assemble a team that can test drive all systems you evaluate. Prepare some activities you know are commonplace. First, see how much information the users need to get started. After a few times, put a watch to see how long they spend on managing the data. An additional aspect of user friendly is the same as the point above; flexibility. Is it easy to configure the system yourself?

4. Roadmap

Investing in a maintenance system can be a low cost, but the real investment that you make over time is all the knowledge your users have. So where is your supplier going? Do they have a direction, push forward technology, Industry 4.0, the Internet of things, are they cloud-based, have an open web monkey? It is better to go with someone who has a clear vision that they can tell about. It’s your future!

5. Functionality

Why this point is last? Our experience is that an open mind, when it comes to functions, provides incredible benefits. If you are sure that your supplier can maintain, you can also expect the system to have the functionality needed to support you and the maintenance organization. But the way a system supports different activities may vary. So instead of asking for a specific feature, we recommend that you ask how the solution for your function looks. Functions such as fault reporting, prioritizing, planning, preparing planned maintenance, adding equipment, purchasing, indicators, diagrams and trend lines, or which function you think is important. Maybe you will find simpler solutions as some suppliers are innovative.