In this article I will go through the process of transitioning
from an unstructured maintenance organization to an integrated and
organized maintenance organization. In larger companies, consultants
are usually brought in to assist in the transition because it's
simply too time consuming and complex to implement it with only
in-house resources.
Smaller companies do not have the luxury of
hiring professional consultants and therefore need to do it
themselves but this is not a lost case because the way they are
typically structured is way simpler than on a large company so
preparing to use a CMMS should not be considered a daunting task.
In
fact, in a lot of small companies I know, the internal company
organization became more clear after the implementation of the CMMS
because some of the choices that had to be taken “forced” a more
clear definition of responsibilities (both departmental and
personal).
This article focuses on CMMS implementation/ transition by
micro, small and medium businesses as defined by European standards
(micro < 10 staff, small < 50 staff and medium < 250 staff).
But why is the preparation work complex and why
does it need to be a well thought process?
The reason is that wrong choices during implementation can create
future problems that ultimately result in loss of efficiency while
using the CMMS. You can see the irony here: the very reasons to
implement the CMMS - increase in efficiency and effectiveness of
actions - come away perhaps worse than they were and you actually
spent money for that to happen!
So what should my organization look at?
In my opinion there’s two main items to consider: the first has
to do with your organization maintenance structure. By this I mean
what is the process that goes from the report of a fault to the final
fix? Who gets notified at the different stages of that process? Lets
call this first item the organizational setup.
Then there’s the way in which your organization classifies your
assets and we will call this asset categorization. Depending on your
organization, you may already have simple numbering sequence scheme
(as in car #1 and car #2) or a more detailed coded scheme (as in
P21-B01WP001 for Plant 2 (P2), main unit 1, boiler 1 (B01), Water
Pump 001).
Organizational Setup
We’ll first look at the organizational setup. It is impossible
that your organization fits the description on this point but there
will be parallels to your organizational model. A good CMMS is
developed with adaptability in mind and even though it cannot foresee
every single possibility, it will be easily adjusted to your reality.
Usually, organizations have a maintenance manager, someone
responsible for the overall performance of the maintenance efforts.
There will then be the unit managers, sometimes organized in
technical specialties such as electrical, mechanical and so on. We
then have the technicians, the people that actually perform the field
work. We must also consider who generates work requests.
Considering the hierarchy above, the workflow, will be similar to
the following:
a) A work request is generated by any system user.
b) The work
request is sent to the maintenance manager (or any user with proper
system permissions). The maintenance manager sets a priority for the
execution of the work.
c) The maintenance manager assigns the job
to the unit manager depending on the suspected nature of the
fault.
d) The unit manager assigns the job to technicians that
will then perform the job.
e) The technicians report on the work
done.
f) The unit manager completes the order after adjusting
eventual errors on assignment of the order to the asset that had the
fault and completes the process on any spare that was used.
g) The
maintenance manager closes the order.
The cloudruge maintenance software can implement the flow above
and other similar arrangements with plenty of flexibility as to the
number of people at each level.
Asset Categorization
The asset categorization is a tricky one. The thing is that a
correct categorization means that it will be a lot easier to get
information back from the CMMS. If you have rules and standards on
how you classify your assets and the components that make the asset
up the way that you organize the information that pertains to those
items (like work orders, spares, documentation) will be a lot neater
and thus easier to find.
In my opinion is always easier to go to a hierarchical
organization. That means that each asset is organized from a general
starting point all the way to a specific end point. It is better to
think of an example.
Consider a boiler in service at a small resort. This boiler is
used only on the tennis club house. That resort is a unit of a larger
company and the maintenance is centralized. The boiler has a pressure
gauge at the output that needs to be coded.
In this case we would start by the company (the root owner of all
assets):
LEVEL 0: XPTO as the code company.
We would then specify the second level. It makes sense that that
is the resort code:
LEVEL 1: RST03 as resort 3.
We then go to the type of asset unit:
LEVEL 2: REC as recreational
Followed by what the actual recreational unit:
LEVEL 3: TC for tennis center
Now, we specify the system:
LEVEL 4: WH for water heating
The subsystem:
LEVEL 5: B01 for boiler 1
The component:
LEVEL 6: Pressure Gauges
And a sequence number for the component:
LEVEL 7: 01
So the total asset code for the pressure gauge will be a cryptic
XPTO.RST03.REC.TC.WH.B01.Pressure Gauges.01
I usually work with 7 levels but
comma CMMS has an unlimited number
of hierarchical levels. Too few may be limiting but remember that too
many may be confusing.
What’s the power of this model? Take, for example the storage of
documentation that refers to the architectural drawings for the
tennis center. If you have the above structure in place, you can
assign those drawings to XPTO.RST03.REC.TC and stop at that level. If
you have the pressure gauge datasheet, you can assign it to the full
pressure gauge asset code. On yet another example if you have the
as-built boiler drawings, you can assign those to
XPTO.RST03.REC.TC.WH.B01 and stop at that level.
Work order assignment to assets works the same way. Say two years
after it was done, you need to remember that actions taken for the
replacement of the pressure gauge. You can simply search the system
for orders closed 2 years ago, under the full asset code of pressure
gauge 01.
In Summary
To guarantee an effective CMMS transition there are two key
elements that need to be studied and considered: how your maintenance
organization works and how you will organize your assets. Let me warn
you now: there will have to be some degree of adjustment of people to
new ways and this is not always easy. It will also not be the
simplest of jobs but the benefits of a CMMS greatly justify this
minor investment in time and resources to make it work. Besides it’s
a onetime effort only until once the “machine” is rolling.
By Rui Alves. TD of comma CMMS. Originally published in Jan 2015.