How can maintenance software help reduce downtime?

There are a few ways I’ve seen maintenance software help reduce downtime, and they all come down to streamlining your maintenance processes.

Planning Better PM Tasks

The data available through maintenance software—and a CMMS particularly—help you plan better preventive maintenance tasks so they become more effective. Given that about 45% of all maintenance tasks are ineffective, streamlining PM to target tasks that actually prevent failures can do a great deal to reduce downtimes.

A CMMS helps you achieve that by tracking asset failures and work orders. As you plan more work that prevents failures and less work that doesn’t, you should expect to have fewer unplanned downtimes in the future.

Streamlined Workflow and Higher Schedule Compliance

As your maintenance technicians complete work orders, they can easily log that data into your CMMS without taking too much extra time.

Maintenance software also makes it easy to assign tasks to your technicians without unnecessary delays, and it enables reporting from the field though a connected mobile app. This shaves hours off of maintenance processes, allowing your staff to get more actual work done each day.

As you make more space for wrench time, you’ll be better at staying on top of preventive maintenance tasks designed to avoid failures (and thereby reduce downtime).

Faster Diagnostics and Repairs

In the event that an asset does fail, the greater efficiency you get through a CMMS—particularly one with mobile access—helps you get the asset back online faster. Operators can immediately mark an asset as non-operational, making it easy to quickly assign a work order. Technicians spend less time finding replacement parts or looking up schematics since that information can be kept in the system as well.

As your technicians have easier access to this information, they’re able to diagnose problems faster and quickly implement the right solutions. The end result is the asset gets back online faster.

Conclusion

Essentially, as you implement maintenance software in your plant, you’ll be able to plan better PM tasks, maintain greater schedule compliance, and get assets back online faster after a failure.