How to Turn Your CMMS Into a Time-Saver

Your Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is capable of a lot more than scheduling and tracking maintenance activities. Properly optimized, it can save you time that you can use to do the actual repair work that boosts productivity, enhances safety, and improves your bottom line.  

Will you have to invest some time initially to save time in the long run? Absolutely. But once you start taking advantage of your CMMS’s automation capabilities, you’ll reclaim that time and more.  

Time-Wasting Tasks Your CMMS Can Handle  

If you’re spending time on these tasks, you’re underutilizing your CMMS:  

• Manually creating end tracking work orders, including sending follow-up emails and entering updates by hand.  

• Continually diarizing recurring tasks such as preventative maintenance.  

• Tracking inventory and reordering parts and supplies manually.  

• Dealing with communication backlogs between technicians, facilities managers, and vendors. 

• Straightening out miscommunications such as incomplete information, duplicate inquiries, and scheduling conflicts.  

• Playing phone tag with the people needed for decision-making or servicing.  

• Waiting for approvals to do repairs or order parts while those approval requests sit in someone’s inbox.  

• Sending technicians to sites without the information or documents they need, causing them to travel to and from the office.  

• Scrambling to find supplies or parts when stocks run low.  

• Rooting through paperwork to find manuals and warranties for your machines and tools.  

• Pulling information from your files, sorting through it, and compiling it for cost analysis, budget meetings, and compliance reporting.  

These time-consuming tasks may be so routine that you haven’t considered better ways of doing them, including the conveniences already available in your CMMS.  

Eliminating Time Wasters with Your CMMS 

Here’s how your CMMS can save you time once it’s properly configured for your facility and your team:  

Automating Work Order Creation and Tracking 

Your CMMS can automatically generate, assign, and track work orders. Updates and task completions can be entered in real time, eliminating duplication of effort and the need for follow-up messages.  

 Handling Recurring Maintenance Tasks 

Preventive maintenance tasks can be set up on a schedule with automatic reminders. The software sends out notifications to designated individuals and prompts them to record the results.  

Tracking Inventory of Parts and Supplies 

Parts and supplies are linked to each asset (piece of machinery, equipment, tool, etc) and work order. This allows the CMMS to track low inventory and trigger reorders, saving the time needed to track down parts and supplies if they run out.  

 Centralizing Communications 

Technicians, facilities managers, and vendors can all update the same work orders. They can add notes, photos, and documents to avoid duplicate messages, missing information, overlooked details, scheduling issues, and other types of miscommunications that result in wasted time.  

 Facilitating Approvals  

Automated workflows mean repair and purchase requests go to the right person every time. No more running around looking for the appropriate person to sign off on a request, and no more waiting for them to see your email.  

 Getting Correct Information to Technicians  

It’s one thing to keep technicians informed in a small factory or shop; it’s another when they’re spread out over a large plant or a multi-site organization. Your CMMS can store everything a technician needs to know when they’re on site working on a problem. That includes manuals, warranties, service records, and parts information. No more trips to the office to look at documentation, and no more time wasted diagnosing problems that are already well documented.  

Retaining Institutional Knowledge

When a technician, floor supervisor, or facility manager leaves a company, they only have so much time to train their replacement. After that, all the knowledge they have about the assets they’ve worked on leaves with them, and the company has to spend time getting the new person up to speed. With consistent use of your CMMS, all that knowledge is logged for sharing.  

Simplifying Reporting  

When repair and maintenance data is tracked consistently, all the data you need to compile reports and make decisions is at your fingertips. Forget spending three full days every month struggling with spreadsheets and sorting through paperwork. Just tap a few keys and everything you need is right there.  

Configuring Your CMMS for Time Savings  

Setting up your CMMS for improved efficiency does take time, but the investment pays off. Once the system is configured properly and everyone has bought into using it, it’ll run quietly in the background while you find impactful ways to spend the time you’re recovering.  

Get started with some simple steps, and pick up the momentum from there: 

• Clean your data by removing completed work orders, obsolete assets and redundant information.  

• Upload accurate information about assets and inventory.  

• Automate a few key tasks, such as preventative maintenance, inspections, and critical reports.  

• Set up alerts and notifications for must-do tasks and spending that requires approval.  

• Train staff on the system, giving them hands-on practice with mobile apps and with dashboards as applicable. Ensure CMMS training is part of your onboarding process going forward.  

• Check in with users after the first month to identify roadblocks, and periodically after that.  

You can also approach the time-reclamation challenge by identifying one or two major time wasters and configuring your CMMS to deal with them. Once you’ve had success with that, you’ll have a solid framework for more changes going forward.  

Maintenance Care’s CMMS: The Ultimate Time-Saving Tool  

Maintenance Care’s CMMS was designed to make maintenance management efficient and effective. Specific features that eliminate wasted time include:  

• Work order management: Stop losing time to manual data entry and endless follow-up emails. Maintenance Care’s CMMS  automatically creates, assigns, and tracks work orders so nothing slips through the cracks, and nothing gets duplicated.  

• Mobile CMMS app: Eliminate wasted trips back to the office by making work orders and related information accessible from the technician’s mobile device.  

• Preventative maintenance scheduling: Set it up in your system and then let the system automatically generate recurring tasks without manual entry work.  

• Automated alerts and notifications: Stop scrambling to complete overdue tasks at the last minute; set your CMMS up to send reminders for pending work orders, low inventory, upcoming inspections, and periodic reports so you can stay ahead of the work and make smarter use of your time.  

• Parts and supplies inventory management: No more time spent running out to get last-minute supplies and parts.  

• Asset tracking: No need to search through big binders or crammed file folders for relevant records and documentation.  

• Reporting and analytics: Don’t spend hours searching for and compiling data. Generate maintenance summaries, cost analyses, and performance reports instantly from your dashboard.  

• Store critical knowledge: Ensure that accumulated knowledge about specific machines and equipment is retained and accessible.  

Need help setting up your CMMS for time savings? Contact us today to talk about what Maintenance Care can do for your business.