One of the biggest issues in any maintenance department is the budget. There needs to be enough money to make sure required work does not fall behind, there has to be enough for equipment and emergencies, and enough for salaries to ensure you have enough staff.
Here are a few ways to help get ahead of your budget issues, using a CMMS program:
Plan Ahead
It is easy to say that you will plan ahead but a little harder to implement it. Since your maintenance budget is arbitrary, you want to take into account extra money for emergencies like equipment replacement. You cannot always go by last year’s budget because things change like the need for new equipment or salary changes so make sure you adjust for those things that may pop up.
Zero Based Budgeting
Your maintenance budget should be built from scratch each fiscal year which is called zero based budgeting. This allows you to be able to consider all of the major expenses that are coming up and allows you to be prepared for them.
Start Preparing
Along with planning ahead, preparing means to check equipment and look at the numbers. Try to inspect equipment and look at how long before a piece of equipment may last before it breaks down, take into account the consequences of this breakdown such as downtime, repair costs, replacement costs, etc, and make sure that all employees are on-board with pointing out any specific problems and how to spot them.
Reactive maintenance can be detrimental to your company. What happens is that your maintenance department gets stuck in a cycle of emergencies that need fixing and then regular work tasks fall behind, any preventative maintenance you may need to do gets behind, and before you know it, the workplace is in a constant state of hurrying to get things done.
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It is not an immediate change in fixing the problem and being proactive instead of reactive but taking the extra effort pays off in the end. While doing inspections and logging equipment repairs takes time, this time ensures that you are better equipped to handle whatever comes your way.
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