What Is The Best Way To Schedule Preventative Maintenance?

Preventative Maintenance Is A Key Process

No matter what the company, keeping your equipment running smoothly and efficiently is of the utmost importance when it comes to productivity and money. Preventative maintenance is a key process that should not be overlooked. E.I. DuPont de Nemours Co. (Delaware) reported that “The largest, single controllable expenditure in a plant is maintenance, and in many plants the maintenance budget exceeds annual net profit.” (1996). Maintenance management software aka CMMS software is something that can help better schedule maintenance and help make sure that nothing is missed. Unfortunately in many organizations maintenance management software is not fully utilized or not utilized at all. Frequently maintenance managers make plans on paper or use spreadsheets to schedule preventative maintenance work.

The Drawbacks of Manual Maintenance Checks

Any maintenance manager who starts a schedule of the maintenance that needs to be done and who draws up a set plan for each item of equipment in the factory or plant, will have to follow up individually with each item on that list and ensure that the maintenance was carried out properly. This is a time consuming process which over 90% of maintenance managers cannot allocate resources to on a regular basis. This means that one or more of the following takes place:

• The maintenance falls behind, slowing productivity.
• The maintenance is not completed accurately, allowing for future problems.
• The maintenance is not carried out as often as is necessary for some items, reducing equipment life

Why Use Maintenance Management Software?

Whatever the case, one of the easiest and most cost effective ways of combating this problem is to invest in maintenance management software. This will allow the managers to set protocols out and specify the maintenance schedules for each area and each item of equipment. The software can also be set to dictate what pieces need more maintenance than others.

The benefits of using maintenance management software include:

• Better scheduling of equipment maintenance so as to reduce downtime
• Allows you to collect & reuse the expertise you need to finish the maintenance procedures accurately
• Helps reduce maintenance personnel burnout by better work scheduling
• Can help reduce expensive breakdown maintenance by better organizing and tracking planned preventative maintenance
• Can help increase equipment usable life by better scheduling preventative maintenance
• Better tracking and use of maintenance parts & spares – this can be a major cost item!
• Gives you the ability to stay up to date with the machines and any progress or problems that come up

Finding The Right Maintenance Management Software

Get a free guide that can help you evaluate different preventative maintenance scheduling software to see how well they will fit your requirements.