Large businesses and organisations with many mechanised and computerised assets are especially vulnerable to the effects of unscheduled tool and equipment downtime. This causes particular problems in organisations that are not managed efficiently and can cause the following problems:
- Lack of morale: When tool and equipment breakdowns or unplanned maintenance occurs, this can have a debilitating effect on staff morale. In situations where engineers and technicians need to perform unplanned maintenance, workers often feel that they are not “in the loop” and are simply being cut out by management.
- Risk management: When preventive maintenance is not performed regularly, equipment and machinery can break down more often and underperform. When this occurs, delays occur in work tasks that affects both worker and company profits.
- Asset management: When company assets are not managed effectively, paper trails and reports can go missing. This can have an impact if tax audits are initiated.
How to Manage Assets and Schedule Maintenance
Asset management and preventive maintenance is an area that is ideally suited to a computerised management system. A CMMS (Computerised Maintenance Management System) ensures that preventive maintenance is performed on time, to budget, and without costly delays. Specifically, it offers the following benefits:
- Minimised failure rates: Through planned maintenance, equipment failure rates are minimised. A computerised management system ensures that maintenance occurs on equipment at scheduled times without the risk of them being mismanaged. Assets perform optimally and result in less worker frustration.
- Reports: Such a system can export reports and audits to Microsoft Project. This makes it easy to keep track of all planned and scheduled maintenance at any time.
- Scheduling: When maintenance is managed effectively and scheduled ahead of time, it not only cuts down equipment failure rates, but also ensures that everyone is aware of when it will happen.
- Alerts: By using an automated system, all relevant staff, engineers, and technicians can be alerted when an outage is planned. This leads to better morale, better reporting, and better knowledge around planned maintenance.
- Workload balancing: When scheduled maintenance is haphazard, technical teams can often feel rushed and harried. By contrast when preventive maintenance is planned and everyone is aware of when it is happening, technical and engineering teams can plan their workload accordingly.
Running an Organisation the Smart Way
In today’s competitive global economy, no business, large or small, can afford not to use computerised management systems when they have been proven to reduce costs, reduce delays, and improve organisational workflow. For a business to succeed in an age where information flows so quickly and competitors are using the latest in cutting edge software and operational processes, it is imperative that they seek the same advantages.
In order to ensure that equipment maintenance and outages are scheduled effectively, it is important to implement a solution that is automated, can store and export reports, and can track stock and inventory. Such a computerised system presents an opportunity for organisations to minimise risk, delays, and profit losses.