How about changing your organization from an equipment repair culture to an asset-management culture???

Well, what do you know...you can use the Internet / Web for managing your equipment and facilities maintenance duties!  It is powerful; manageable in real time ANYTIME ANYWHERE; affordable; and customizable to your particular needs!  And, you can have your online maintenance system up and running relatively quickly and WITHOUT an IT (Information Technology) administrator!!! 

You will be able to do more with less!!!!  It is a 'CMMS/EAM' (Computerized Maintenance Management System / Enterprise Asset Management) software system.  Although this technology is not new, it is becoming more mainstream.  Its popularity is growing because of its effectiveness for cost containment and its global integration attribute required for this 21^st century competitive marketplace!  Open source software versions are also available.

Maintenance costs, whether equipment, facilities or property related, are often times the root cause behind the demise of a business or its loss of market share.  Maintenance costs drive up the 'real costs' of doing business.  This usually results in a 'domino effect' where product and service prices increase.  This would give your competitors a HUGE advantage.  Also, if you neglect to have the right equipment parts on hand or your preventive maintenance (PM) program (some refer to it as preventative maintenance) is ineffective or non-existent, late orders result unnecessarily, customers go elsewhere, and your financials become negatively impacted.

With a solid web-based asset management (EAM) and maintenance management system (CMMS), you will be able to tie together all applicable internal staff, subcontractors, suppliers, and others within a centralized container that is accessible ANYTIME ANYWHERE!

Result  => IMMEDIATE savings in both time and money

•  Reduced downtime
•  Increased capability and capacity
•  Reduced labor requirements and other direct and indirect costs
•  Scheduling becomes more controllable which results in on-time delivery increases
•  Parts inventory control and purchase requisition integration
•  Supplier tracking data to assist with decision-making during the procurement process
•  Extended asset life
•  Reduced energy consumption
•  Improved workflow
•  Data, Data, Data and graphical representations for better decision making!
•  24/7 Data access and data sharing ability and much more...
•  PROFITS!!! 

With this system, data becomes immediately available to authorized persons from any location that has Internet access.  When work orders are created, you can be immediately notified by E-mail which can then notify you on your PDA even when you are on the golf course!  That way, you can quickly prioritize or change priorities and get your operations up and running again!  Upon job completion, again, you can be immediately notified by E-mail. 

You will be able to quickly view a real-time snapshot of your organization's current maintenance system status and perform many other valuable functions.  This includes listing all new, scheduled, and closed work orders (planned, unplanned, and PM); charge labor and parts costs to the work order; attach repair, safety, and PM instructions for worker consistency and accuracy; track parts inventories and parts on order; set reorder flags when parts inventories reach a certain minimum level; search various types of histories based on your chosen criteria; run reports for data analysis; view your data in a graphic format to spot trends; and more.   You could even use this information to determine if you need to retire a piece of equipment or make capacity adjustments.  

Your office staff can submit work orders for planned or unplanned work.  If you allow them to, your mechanics or technicians can, from any work site, electronically submit purchase requisitions for approval for parts needed for the equipment they are working on instead of calling the office and waiting for someone else to input and submit it.  And since this is a permissions-based system, you can even allow your outside contractors to interact with the system and also be electronically notified of new work orders assigned to them.

While at the job site, mechanics can look at the equipment's history to assist them with diagnosis and gameplan strategy.  Then afterward, they can update the work order by recording what work was done on that equipment, vehicle, etc. and indicate that the repair is complete.  Because it is web-based, they can update that work order record when they get back to their office or while they are still in the field!

You can institute a secondary approval system so that you incorporate checks and balance procedures.  But the key here is that it is web-based and you and your staff would have around-the-clock accessibility from any computer with Internet access!

Does your current maintenance and asset management system have these attributes?

This is a wonderful cost control system and it is highly efficient.  Can you imagine having a system like this working for your business?  It makes excellent business sense, don't you think???

IBNETLLC    |    This article is directly reachable at http://www.Maintenance-CMMS.info

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