How to Transition from Paper Work Orders to a CMMS

If your facility currently uses paper work orders, transitioning over to a CMMS can save time and money, while also helping you improve reliability. However, making that transition is a lengthy process, often taking anywhere between six months to a year. However, when implemented correctly, it can yield significant cost savings.

Why transition to a CMMS from paper work orders

Facilities that use paper work orders can benefit from implementing a CMMS in the following ways.

Make information more accessible

First off, a CMMS makes information more accessible. Instead of having paper maintenance records hidden away in a filing system, you’ll instead be able to pull up past work orders with a quick search. Whether you’re looking through historical data to perform root cause analysis on an asset or simply tallying up hours for accounting purposes, those processes are made much simpler by having them located in a central computerized database.

Streamline data analysis

Modern CMMS systems do more than simply store work order data. They also provide a wide range of tools that are designed to help your maintenance team analyze that data for planning and accounting purposes. For instance, a robust CMMS makes it easy to create custom visual reports for use in asset management.

The tools included with modern systems allow you to quickly analyze data and use it to improve your maintenance processes. In addition, their compatibility with other software systems allows for even greater analysis without the difficulty of sifting through hundreds of paper forms.

Focus working hours on more important tasks

Paper records can slow your facility. Not only does it take time to transfer the information from paper work orders to your records, but you also need to allow time to file them away properly.

In the event that you need to access information on your work orders, the time it takes to sift through a physical filing system wastes labor hours that could be better spent elsewhere. In fact, on average, companies in the U.S. spend about $20 in labor costs to file each document, and it can take about $120 to retrieve a misfiled work order.

By switching to a CMMS to handle your work orders, you’ll be able to spend those labor hours on more productive tasks.

Reduce file management costs

Maintaining filing cabinets costs money (about $2,000 per year per cabinet, on average). Making sure documents are kept secure, organized, and up to date can get expensive. On the other hand, managing your work orders in an electronic CMMS can streamline the process immensely.

9 steps to setting up a CMMS

Setting up a CMMS to take over work order management is a process that requires advance planning and careful implementation, which may be why roughly 80% of all implementations fail. The steps outlined here should help your implementation be successful.

1. Outline your goals

The first step in implementing a CMMS is to decide what you aim to accomplish in doing so. Some of the goals your maintenance team might discuss include:

• Better support a preventive maintenance program
• Reduce maintenance costs
• Improve equipment uptime
• Improve MRO inventory management
• Increase the mobility of your maintenance workforce
• Support asset health tracking

The objectives you decide on will give you a sense of the scope of your CMMS implementation. That will allow you to choose a CMMS with the right features for your facility while also supporting a robust implementation plan.

2. Get an implementation team together

The next step is to get a strong implementation team together. Your team should consist of both management and staff members, but it should also be small in order to make sure the implementation process is handled in a consistent manner.

Generally, the best qualities to look for when choosing members of your implementation team are:

• Familiar with technology
• Analytical mindset
• Detail-oriented
• Committed to reliability
• Communication and interpersonal skills

Familiarity with how your business’s process work, such as maintenance workflows, or the way you currently organize data, also helps. In addition, at least one of your team members should be able to help your maintenance crew get on board with using the new system, both in terms of training and in helping them understand how it makes their lives easier.

3. Choose a user-friendly CMMS

Once you have assembled your team with general goals in place, you’ll need to choose a CMMS that will meet your needs. CMMS programs are often modular in nature, making it easy to choose one that has the features you need to reach your goals.

In addition to choosing a program that has the right features, it’s especially important to make sure it’s user friendly. Doing so will not only ease implementation, but also will facilitate adoption by the maintenance staff members who will be using it on a daily basis.

4. Create an implementation plan

Once you have chosen a CMMS, you can move on to a clear plan for implementation. Your implementation plan should account for the following:

• Resources and personnel needed to gather data to input into the CMMS
• How asset and work order data will be gathered
• How data will be classified and organized
• Who will perform each task
• Key milestones, such as collecting data on assets, outlining a clear numbering scheme, etc.
• Time periods for each milestone

Without a clear cut plan, implementation will likely fail to meet your expectations, so take the time to put one together.

5. List assets with bills of materials

A CMMS helps organize your maintenance and asset management efforts. In order to make sure everything is accurately transferred into your system, you’ll need a complete list of all assets that you maintain in your facility. It may be tempting to stick just with the most important items or the machines that break down the most often, but it’s important to be as thorough as possible here.

Along with each asset on your list, include the bills of materials as well. Having the BOM for each asset will help in the future, as you use your CMMS to create work orders.

If you’re pulling the information from existing records, it’s recommended that you confirm your data with a physical inventory. Doing so will make sure the data in your CMMS matches the reality of your facility.

6. Develop consistent codes

Central to efficient maintenance management is standardization. The terms and codes used for parts, failure modes, and assets in your CMMS will need to be consistent, so take the time to create a naming and numbering system for use in your work orders.

Your bills of materials will come in handy here, since they’ll give you a comprehensive list of parts needed for each asset. In addition, your existing work orders should give you a decent idea of what types of failures occur most often (assuming they’re accurate), so getting a list of codes together shouldn’t be too difficult. The key is to be consistent in order to avoid issues in the future.

7. Populate your CMMS

With your existing data gathered together, it’s time to start populating your CMMS. This may be the most time-consuming step, but having your codes and terms standardized should help expedite the process.

Determining who will perform the data entry depends on your existing workforce. You might want to consider using temporary hires or contractors to handle large amounts of data, or you might be able to have in-house employees do it. Either way, this step only needs to be done once if your data entry methods and codes are consistent.

8. Train your team in using the CMMS

With the data entered into your system, you’ll need to make sure your maintenance team is prepared to use it. CMMS training often covers two separate goals:

• Helping personnel master the skills and processes needed to use the system, and;
• Demonstrating the benefits of using a CMMS to manage work orders.

Your personnel may need training in computer skills, as well as on how to use the software you’ve chosen. In addition, the training should help your team follow a consistent process when using the system.

9. Continue updating your CMMS and processes

Once your CMMS is implemented, it’s good practice to continue updating it. As your business grows, your maintenance needs may change, and that could mean adding more features to your system.

In addition, your initial implementation likely isn’t perfect, and your maintenance team may take some time to master the processes you have in place for using the system. Perform regular audits to check up on data integrity or to find weak points in your CMMS workflow, and then use your findings to make improvements.

6 tips for making the switch over to a CMMS

As with any process, CMMS implementation has its best practices. As you convert your paper work orders to digital format in your system, these tips should help you avoid most pitfalls.

1. Choose tech- (and people-) savvy personnel for your implementation team

First of all, you’ll need tech-savvy people on your implementation team. While it may be tempting to fill your team with the seasoned veterans of your maintenance crew, they won’t help much with integrating the software into your existing workflows if they don’t have the needed technical skills.

In addition, CMMS implementation may require some adjustment to your existing maintenance workflows, so the institutional memory of your long-time employees may not be as useful as you might think.

Along with the tech side of CMMS implementation, strong people skills are recommended as well. You need your crew members to be genuinely engaged in using the software, and having someone on your team who can champion the virtues of your new system to them can help accomplish that.

2. Plan ahead

Advance planning is vital to successful CMMS implementation. You have a lot of data to put into your system, whether it’s from work orders, BOMs, instruction manuals, or existing databases. Sifting through all that information, making sure it’s accurate, and creating a consistent coding system for it in your CMMS takes time, and you’ll need to make sure it’s handled as efficiently as possible.

Take time to make sure you have plans in place for every stage of the process, complete with the right people assigned to each task. Doing so will make implementation smoother.

3. Get your maintenance crew on board

Prior to rolling out your CMMS, make sure you get your maintenance crew on board. They may see the change as either unnecessary or as a threat to their job security, and that could get in the way of using the system effectively.

In order to help your maintenance team see the change from paper to a CMMS as a positive one, take some time to get input from them and address their concerns. Doing so can ease the transition.

4. Include terminology in your training

A part of your training should cover the terminology and coding used in your system. While your personnel may see some of the distinctions between different parts or assets as unnecessary (such as the difference between a “lamp” and a “bulb”), it helps avoid confusion and errors later on, and it will keep your process consistent.

5. Use the provider’s resources during implementation

CMMS providers will typically have their own resources to help with implementation and training. They’ll offer support to help you throughout implementation, and they’ll often handle much of the training themselves, particularly when it comes to using their software. Take advantage of these resources—they know their software better than anyone, after all.

6. Don’t try to do everything at once

Perhaps the most important thing to remember is to focus on “good” rather than “perfect.” While you do want to make sure your CMMS is implemented properly and operates seamlessly as part of your maintenance workflows, trying to get everything perfect right at the start can keep you from ever rolling it out.

Remember that you’ll keep updating the system after implementation, so focus on getting it working first and worry about perfecting it later.

Making the change to a CMMS

While the process of switching from paper work orders to a CMMS can be time-consuming, the long-term cost-savings are well worth it. With a solid plan and a consistent process in place, your implementation should be successful.