So much work, so little time
In my recent travels, I have been hearing a lot about the lack of manpower and time to do maintenance. I am often asked, "How in the world would there be time to use CMMS?"...
November 1, 2005 | By Peter Phillips
In my recent travels, I have been hearing a lot about the lack of manpower and time to do maintenance. I am often asked, “How in the world would there be time to use CMMS?”
Before we get into using computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) and how it can indeed help improve maintenance, let’s look more closely at manpower and time issues that keep the vast majority of maintenance departments behind schedule.
Just about everywhere I go the same story comes up — there’s not enough maintenance people to do the work. It doesn’t seem to matter if it’s a manufacturing facility, hospital, airport or university; these maintenance departments are putting out more fires than preventing them.
Maintenance crews are doing all they can just to provide the day-to-day necessities to keep a facility running, with very little time to do planned or preventive maintenance. They tell me that most of the time they are barely keeping ahead of the next catastrophe.
Next, it’s the time issue I hear about. “Where is the time going to come from to do the maintenance?” they ask. If you read the business section in most publications, it seems industry in North America is booming. Many companies can sell all they can make and delivery schedules are running way behind. As a result, the production department is extremely reluctant to give up its equipment for maintenance work. Planned maintenance that requires equipment downtime is reduced, if not eliminated. So preventive maintenance (PM) time is just not being made available.
One maintenance planner explained to me that he’s lucky to get the equipment long enough to complete scheduled lubrication. The production department at that plant understands that lack of lubrication is a key factor in machine failure. But his planned PM jobs will have to wait for a scheduled holiday, when the plant is idle.
Others I’ve talked to are not as fortunate, responding to breakdown maintenance only as they get further and further behind on their PM work.
Many facilities are undermanned from recent years of maintenance staff reduction and physically do not have the people needed to do all the work. To make things worse, a lot of professional maintenance people are now at the age of retirement. Trying to replace retiring staff or finding new hires is difficult. North American companies continue to face a massive shortage of skilled trades people.
Many educational institutions in Canada have shifted their emphasis from trade skills to high-tech education, focusing on information technology. Even though there has been an enormous effort to beef up trade courses in the education system in recent years, demand still outpaces the availability of skilled trades people.
So there we have it. Not enough people and not enough time — both ingredients that are going to make maintenance activities and equipment reliability suffer.
I can understand the frustration that maintenance managers face. They bear the brunt of complaints at morning production meetings when the equipment has failed during the night.
What can we do to relieve some of the burden and be ready when things turn around? It’s simple — implement a CMMS system, of course!
I firmly believe CMMS will save you time, money and will help you manage scarce resources.
I’m not saying this because our company consults and sells CMMS software. I’m saying it because there are many facilities that use CMMS effectively, despite having limited staff and time.
For what it’s worth, here are my reasons for using the right CMMS.
First, keep it simple. To effectively use CMMS when you have limited resources, the software has to be user-friendly. Some new programs are cumbersome to use and take too long to schedule maintenance and to close work orders. If you have not purchased the software yet, then do some research on the products available. Talk to companies that already use the software and ask them what they like or dislike about the system. Is it easy to use and simple to schedule work activities?
If the software you have now is not user-friendly, talk to your provider and get some custom work done. If necessary, consider investing in a new program. Some facilities are using older CMMS products and may find the newer software more effective, with more functions to help plan maintenance activities.
Second, when the heat is off the production department, they will once again make machine time available to do maintenance. Your CMMS will know where you left off in your maintenance work — perhaps months ago — and now it’s time to revive the program. You’ll want to be ready to jump on that available time. Your CMMS, if it has been managed properly, should get you out of the gate in a hurry.
Third, CMMS will provide the ability for you to completely plan and stage your work orders. Planning and staging a work order simply means that you ensure that all the parts, services, documents, special tools, etc., are available to do the work when the time comes. All this information should be available in the CMMS program. No guesswork involved, no files to search, just plan the work.
Work orders can be completely organized in a staging area, with all the necessary materials to complete a work order ready to go. The CMMS is the most effective tool I know to handle this process using a few simple steps.
Finally, CMMS can be used to justify the need for additional manpower. Using the system to record work requests and to generate work orders provides the evidence of just how much work the maintenance department has to do.
So there you have it. If you have manpower and time issues, it’s even more important to make time for a CMMS system.
Peter Phillips of Trailwalk Holdings, a CMMS consulting and training company based in Nova Scotia, can be reached at 902-798-3601 or by e-mail at peter@trailwalk.ca. He will answer your questions on CMMS issues or problems. His previous columns can be viewed at www.mromagazine.com.