Until a few years ago, industrial maintenance was still considered as a separate field, with no link with the company’s activities. And yet, maintenance activities have rapidly come into renewed focus to become essential to companies. The rise of Industry 4.0 and next-gen CMMS has revolutionized this area, thus becoming of focal point of business concerns and a real driver of competitiveness.
Nowadays, factories are facing ever shorter delivery times and ever higher quality standards, making it difficult for them to meet production deadlines. To meet all requirements, production tools must operate optimally and continuously throughout their life cycle. CMMS is thus an essential tool: CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) are software that help companies ensure sustainable production and optimize processes through the monitoring and planning of their maintenance activities.
In the midst of traditional maintenance tools, modern solutions are emerging: easier to use and more in line with the needs of today’s plant. These are next-gen computerized maintenance management systems, like Mobility Work, the first social network and platform dedicated to maintenance professionals, offering both a maintenance management solution and an interface dedicated to suppliers.
Between traditional tools and 4.0 solutions, how can you choose the one that best suits your needs?
Why you should go for a CMMS
Maintaining your machine fleet improves the company’s daily technical and economic results as well as the quality of its products.
The very essence of industrial maintenance is to ensure the proper functioning and availability of machines and various production equipment. However, “corrective” maintenance cannot be the sole approach to reaching these objectives, as this type of maintenance only occurs following a breakdown. On the contrary, “preventive” maintenance was developed to prevent breakdowns through planned and regular maintenance activities. Unfortunately, visual inspection and preventive maintenance alone do not guarantee the continuity of the production line either. This method provides you with very little visibility into the actual state of the machine and can lead to unnecessary operations and maintenance costs. On the other hand, you will get better results thanks to predictive maintenance, especially when combined with a preventive maintenance strategy. Predictive maintenance is a technical and administrative approach that allows machine data to be monitored in real time to prevent potential failures and avoid pitfalls in an efficient and effective way.
All maintenance strategies share the same goal: to optimize production while minimizing downtime. However, these strategies are not infallible and cannot completely eliminate risk. Consequently, the choice of strategy to be implemented becomes all the more important in order to reduce the risk as much as possible.
Maintenance management software help you to implement the chosen strategy, redefine communication and avoid potentially disastrous information losses for the entire production chain. The implementation of a computerized maintenance management solution facilitates the maintenance process in the company, also reduces the resources used and facilitates maintenance planning. This system allows the information to be compiled to provide a history of the condition of the machines and the costs generated by maintenance operations.
All news related to ongoing interventions are available from the Mobility Work application’s newsfeed.
The Main Advantages of a CMMS
Choosing and implementing a maintenance management solution can sometimes be difficult if it is not intuitive or requires a long period of training. Nevertheless, these systems are increasingly present in all plants and are now an integral part of maintenance processes. Why is computerized maintenance management so popular?
It’s very simple: these solutions meet a need and bring real added value to the company. For a plant, the main advantages of management software stand out, among others, in 3 areas: maintenance, data analysis and security
Maintenance
These solutions, and in particular the next-gen CMMS, directly inspired from Industry 4.0, make it possible to reduce unplanned downtime by preventing potential failures. This type of IT solution communicates and records machine data in real time (from sensors feedback or directly entered by maintenance technicians) to avoid unpleasant surprises and act as soon as possible. This system streamlines production and maintenance processes, which makes it possible to improve quality while ensuring that delivery times are met.
Maintenance operations are requested in real time, and are accessible to everyone: easily and quickly at the right time. Communication between the different teams is facilitated, in particular thanks to the news feed inspired by social networks, proposed by the Mobility Work platform: production teams can send intervention requests, and receive information about how to take their request into account in real time. In addition to this, the operator of a machine can also be trained to perform first-level maintenance immediately, which increases his or her responsibility and the availability of maintenance teams. They can then focus more on critical incidents. The indirect benefits of this fluid maintenance are the increase in equipment life, optimization of machine availability and performance, increased productivity and energy savings.
Detailed Data Analysis
The data collected by the factory’s sensors are available in the maintenance management software thanks to the software’s open APIs, and allow better visibility on the real state of the machine fleet. In addition, this data is analyzed in real time using the powerful Big Data tool directly integrated into the Mobility Work application. This gives the user a precise knowledge of the actual maintenance costs supported by these very precise figures.
The major risk is to be overwhelmed by the massive amount of data that is sent and collected in a plant. Even if an Excel file can be used for data monitoring, it often quickly becomes unreadable. The alternative is to read the data directly in the CMMS software that has been designed to eliminate this problem by filtering the data to provide only the information necessary for the proper management of the company. Thanks to dynamic dashboards, Mobility Work allows you to analyze your field data in real time.
Security Processes
It is every organization’s priority to guarantee their employees’ safety by implementing health and safety guidelines and creating a secure work environment to prevent the risk of accidents. Despite strict standards, maintenance teams are still facing high safety risks. Defective equipment can be dangerous to all people in contact with it during production, maintenance and repair activities.
Maintenance management reduces the risk of accidents through a good preventive maintenance routine. Preventive maintenance makes it possible to anticipate breakdowns and intervene before the equipment becomes dangerous or no longer meets its optimal operating conditions. In addition, the software manages the safety of equipment before maintenance activities (logging, deconsignment, etc.) to ensure a healthy working environment and safe execution. In addition, next-gen CMMS such as Mobility Work is a real database dedicated to maintenance and allows all technical and HSE documents, certifications, fire permits, etc. to be stored in a secure place.
Mobility Work’s intuitive interface is inspired from social media networks to deliver an optimal user experience (available on iOS et Android)
As the days go by, CMMS software becomes more efficient and flexible in order to meet the actual needs of the industry. These solutions have become essential tools to ensure production and competitiveness in the era of Industry 4.0.
Why choose a next-gen solution like Mobility Work?
Traditional maintenance management software have been available on the market for years, but these solutions are expensive and complex. Their complexity and lack of ergonomics often lead to considerable time losses and no added value. Some companies still use these constraining and inaccessible software on smartphones or without a network, but they are increasingly turning to more flexible solutions from Industry 4.0. Breaking with conventional software, Mobility Work stands out as user-friendly.
Mobility Work is a next-gen CMMS and the first social maintenance network. This platform combines all the features of a traditional maintenance management solution with the advantages of a social network and a community of maintenance experts. Mobility Work was built to share best practices, spare parts and opinions on suppliers from any device.
Mobile and user-friendly, the Mobility Work app, available online, on Android and iOS, requires no training and offers features designed to ease the daily activities of the maintenance department and optimize maintenance flows. For example, the checklist and calendar features allow users to organize their workday, schedule tasks and manage their priorities, while the newsfeed gives them access to the latest information from the machine fleet in the blink of an eye. The application is also embedded with an analytical tool that compiles all maintenance data into graphs and tables to assess the efficiency of the maintenance strategy.
