workflow for routing work orders to the appropriate approver, depending on estimated total labor and material dollars, can be established. Furthermore, organizations can establish work limit rules by teams and approval type for customizing notification and authorization schemes. The system can be set up to request the next level of authorization when the actual dollar expenditure logged exceeds a user-defined percentage. Thus, a work order or project can be monitored for significant overruns before it exceeds the defined limit. The system also can be configured to allow only certain people to approve emergency work orders.
Organizations should be able to establish elaborate business rules if desired. For example, a work order of a certain type and dollar value is sequentially routed to two approvers. If the first approver doesn’t approve the work order within a certain period, the supervisor is notified by e-mail/pager. It also can designate alternate approvers under certain conditions, such as when the approver is on vacation. Other features for work order management may include:
1. Being able to create multistep WOs; for similar work, a WO can be saved as a template for future work.
2. Building work standards for labor estimating.
3. Easily inputting data including a graphical user interface having a similar look and feel as Microsoft Office software.
4. Providing status for a given workflow item directly from a table or dashboard.
5. Providing statistics such as the volume of transactions that went through a given period or the average time to complete a specific work activity.
6. Entering standard times for work activities to predict how long a process should take and to report on actual versus standard completion time.
7. Making activities mandatory or optional, depending on the characteristics of the work type (e.g., skip the approval step if a work order is urgent).
The PM and CBM/PdM Module
PM and condition-based monitoring is another important module for CMMS. Some of the features for optimizing the workflow are multiple PM triggers; schedule flexibility that accounts for seasonality, multiple formats, zoom, and simulation; and condition monitoring for user-defined data. Another helpful feature is task shadowing. This feature allows skipping a weekly PM routine if the short-term schedule has an upcoming monthly routine that includes the same weekly tasks.
Information from data collection systems, such as barcode-based time reporting, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) system, and human-machine interface (HMI), can automatically feed into CMMS the condition of assets and the use of maintenance labor and material. If a variance is detected, it can be explained via drill-down to the source data. The condition-based maintenance functionality in a CMMS can be used to establish the control limits that trigger actions,such as issuing a work order or paging a technician, thereby increasing workflow efficiency and effectiveness. Most managers find it increasingly difficult to control rising maintenance costs because of inadequate or outdated procedures. The CMMS can identify such procedures that are consuming large resources and need reviews or updates.
Scheduling Module
Scheduling is an area where different CMMS packages provide significant capabilities. CMMS should provide a schedule to match the work demand for maintenance—open work orders with labor resource availability. Some systems compare the work backlog with a list of available hours, all similarly sorted and filtered. Some systems display this data in graphs to help in workload balancing. A good way to display this data can be a bar graph in the top half of the screen and the lists of work orders in the bottom half.
Some CMMS packages increased their level of sophistication by seamless linkage to homegrown or third-party project management software. This gives users access to comprehensive features such as critical path analysis, Gantt charting, and resource utilization optimization.
Probably the most exciting breakthrough in scheduling functionality is the ability to perform “what-if ” analysis. By playing with variables such as estimated duration of work, work order priority, and labor availability, the maintenance scheduler can fine-tune the schedule without having to make a permanent change in the source data. Only after the scheduler and craft supervisors are satisfied with the schedule, the data is frozen and the source data updated.
Productivity and User-Centered Design
One of the most important trends in CMMS has been the improvement in user-centered design or usability. For those CMMS packages that rewrote their software to become web-based (or cloud-based), the new, improved user interfaces have become more user friendly. To compare prospective CMMS vendors, some users have even developed several scenarios to assess how many screens it takes to complete a given series of tasks and over what time. Some compare how many screens or clicks are typically needed to get the information they need. The web-based software packages offer much improvement over older systems,with features such as:
1. A search toolbar
2. Bookmarks
3. Favorites
4. A history pull-down, which provides a list of screens that were visited in the past, in chronological order, including hyperlinks
5. Back and Forward buttons to move through the last-viewed screens
6. A URL toolbar, which allows the user to key in any screen address or website reference (like a “go-to” feature)
Another key trend in user-centered design has been the flexibility in customizing the application to the varying needs of individuals or tailoring it to different roles such as maintenance planner, scheduler,supervisor, craftsperson, and stock keeper. This trend decreases training time, simplifies the execution of day-to-day processes, improves accuracy and speed of data entry, and facilitates extraction of relevant information that leads to better and faster decision making. Examples of customization capability are:
• Security access that defines who has access to certain fields,screens, menus, etc., and whether data is read-only or even visible on-screen
• Screen layouts including what fields are viewed on which screen or tab, field labels, size and shape of each field, field position, colors, tab labels and content, size and position of columnar data, and default values
• Language that a package displays, as well as the currency used
• Start-up or main menu, i.e., what menu options, shortcuts,report highlights, KPIs, dashboard elements, alarms, drill-downs, notifications, and so on that users want on their home page and in what level of detail
• Reports or searches that are customized by the user in terms of filters and sort criteria, as well as how the information appears on the screen and is printed
• Forms and templates that can make data entry easier
• Help and error messages
Ongoing incremental gains in CMMS features and functions have made many packages better at handling the specialized requirements of particular industries and facilities.
Data Analysis and Reporting
Users embrace the power of the CMMS to transform raw data into information and knowledge that can improve maintenance effectiveness dramatically through the use of analysis tools. It’s not enough to collect data and report on it. Using analysis tools, a CMMS can convert the data to helpful information such as the “top 12 problem assets” (or as some call it,“bad actors”). These problematic assets can be based on dollar value or on the number of downtime events experienced in a specific area last month, last quarter, or last year; they can be shown graphically in ascending order (Pareto chart format) or in some other manner. This analysis allows users to uncover the biggest problems first. We can then drill down on root causes such as faulty spare parts or material from a given manufacturer or supplier, design issues, workmanship issues indicating inadequate training of the maintainer, or operator errors.
Asset management is an area where good reporting and analysis are critical. Equipment history reports on actual labor, planned labor,material, and other costs are sometimes available. The more advanced features include tracking