Maintenance departments of many companies either utilize the Work Order Management functionality of their ERPs or implement a specialized Work Order Management software, to manage the breakdown maintenance and preventive maintenance. Although, having a WO management solution is a necessary step, is it really the solution to all the challenges faced by maintenance professionals in accomplishing their jobs?
What is a Work Order Managementment System?
To find an answer to this question, let's first understand what a Work Order Managementment System really is.
Work Order Management system automates the process of generating Work Orders. If there is a breakdown, users are able to report the issue to maintenance departments by generating a Work Request. These Work Requests can be approved or canceled, as applicable, by Work Order Manager (or Asset Planner or Maintenance Planner or Triage Manager or Maintenance Coordinator). Approved Work Requests are converted to Work Orders. In the case of Preventive maintenance, system alerts the Work Order Manager about the due maintenance tasks. This task can either be automated to generate Work Order automatically, or the Work Order Manager generates the work order for the same.
Maintenance managers admit to not have visibility on the total cost of maintaining an asset
From this point onwards, the process becomes manual, in many organizations and the Work Orders are printed on a piece of paper to be distributed to the appropriate technician. After the completion of the job, the technician returns the print out of the Work Order to the Work Order Manager, who then updates the Work Order Management System with the information such as total resolution time taken, fix applied, spare-parts used, technician's name, and steps followed. After ensuring that the task was accomplished successfully, Work Order Manager closes the Work Order.
What is a Complete Maintenance Management Solution or a CMMS?
A complete maintenance management solution caters to all the information, workflows, processes, operations, procedures, resources, and compliances of a maintenance department.
Computerized Maintenance Management System or CMMS consists of the following: Work Order Management, Spare-Parts/ Inventory Management, Asset Management, Schedule Management, Team Management, Sub-Contractor Management, Customer/ Client Management, Vendor Management, Purchase Management, Budget Management, KPI Management, Reports, and Dashboards
While the Work Order Management helps in saving many man-hours of human effort, thereby improving the per day task completion index; it does not cater to all the requirements for a maintenance department. This article further explores the issues Maintenance leaders face due to the selection of an incomplete automation strategy.
1. Problems related to Spare-Parts: Many maintenance managers admit to not have visibility on the total cost of maintaining an asset. This is primarily due to the lack of accuracy on the spare-parts being used in maintenance jobs. Another major concern they report is the misplacement of spare-parts.
Solution: Above problems arrive when spare-parts are kept disconnected from the system. It is always recommended to implement spare-parts/inventory management along with work-order management. Additionally, Technicians should be encouraged to use mobile apps, while on the field to update the information, in real-time, about spare-parts they use in jobs.
It becomes an overhead for maintenance supervisors to follow up with their spread-out teams throughout the day
2. Disconnection of the office from the field: Real maintenance work happens from the time Work Orders are issued to the technicians until the time WO orders are returned by the technicians for the entry into the work-order management systems. Not implementing any system for this duration created many new challenges, some of which are described below:
Firstly, Assigning printed WO to technicians delays the work-order assignment by a day. This means that the downtime of the asset is prolonged too.
Secondly, it becomes an overhead for maintenance supervisors to follow up with their spread-out teams throughout the day, to maintain clear visibility on the progress of maintenance jobs and performance of the staff.
Thirdly, During the execution of the job, the technician may require to visit office multiple times to access the asset related information, such as maintenance history, asset manual, spare-parts in stock, and more. This is the wastage of his valuable time which could be utilized in other jobs.
Fourthly, technicians are expected to update the software after the job completed with information, such as the actions taken during the job, key observation, and total repair-time. Bot only is this delayed data-entry debatable, but an overhead on technicians - wastage of their precious time which could be well spent on other jobs.
Finally, recording the information much after the job is finished leads to the capturing of unreliable information which would yield no significant analytics in future for decision making.
Solution: Above problems arrive due to disconnection of the office from the field. As a resolution, technicians must be encouraged to use mobile apps through which they can be instantly notified about the WO they are supposed to work. With a click, they can easily get access to all the information related to the asset, without having to leave the site. Technicians can update the progress of their job in real time. Manager will be instantly and automatically notified of the progress made by the employee, without having to constantly follow up. Below video shows an example of such an app.
Uptime is directly proportional to company profits and the company's reputation.
3. Complications in Job Scheduling: Because it is difficult to predict the schedule of technicians, morning meetings are the most common method companies deploy for job distribution amongst their teams. For those Jobs that arrive in the mid of the day, technicians are reached out through phones for schedule confirmation. This method leads to the following challenges:
Firstly, as mentioned above, this leads to the delay in taking action on the job, thereby reducing uptime percentage of assets. This issue is overlooked by many companies. This is serious because uptime is directly proportional to company profits and the company's reputation.
Secondly, speaking with personal experience, calling maintenance teams usually takes you to their voicemails. This is a serious worry when an emergency work order is needed to be assigned in the mid of the day.
Finally, employees can misrepresent to be busy while they could still accommodate more jobs.
Solution: Work Order Manager need not wait to talk to technicians or supervisors in order to assign them jobs. CMMS comes with the scheduling engine which provides visibility to each employee's calendar. Jobs can be directly dragged and dropped onto the next free available schedule.
Instead of simplifying, operations become more complicated
4. Complication IT setup: When only Work Order Management is deployed, maintenance teams face challenges as described above. IT team may offer a solution by introducing more customizations or plug-ins in the software. This could lead to the situation similar to the image on right. In other words, instead of simplifying, operations become more complicated.
Solution: It is highly recommended to use a specialized maintenance management solution, such as Aladdin CMMS, designed specifically for the needs of the maintenance department.
shilpi.kapur@sgeme.com
Comments
Post a Comment