One of the obstacles to the adoption of a mobile CMMS is, for many companies, the fear that this type of solution cannot be used in offline mode. Indeed, factories are not always fully covered by the Wi-Fi or 4G network that teams use to connect to their maintenance management tool.
If some mobile CMMS solutions are indeed limited by the absence of an offline mode, others allow to use their main functions even without any connection. Maintenance managers who wish to equip themselves with this type of application must therefore be careful about the possibility of accessing the CMMS offline.
Mobile CMMS, conditional advantages?
Industrial maintenance management has undergone several developments, the latest of which is the appearance and success of applications that can be used on a smartphone or tablet. These applications have many advantages, but are sometimes subject to technical network conditions.
How does a mobile CMMS work?
As its name suggests, a mobile CMMS application can be used from anywhere on a portable digital terminal connected to the Internet via wifi or a mobile network. All maintenance data can therefore be accessed remotely, and operators can enter information or intervention reports from anywhere in the plant.
In addition, this type of application allows maintenance technicians to use barcodes, NFC chips or QR codes to immediately access all information about a machine.
An optimized maintenance
For the teams on the field, a CMMS solution of this type facilitates both the maintenance itself and its associated tasks. Being able to access machine data in real time saves them precious time. As for intervention reports, they can be entered and consulted as soon as the operation is completed, which favors their accuracy and completeness.
Maintenance becomes more accurate and quicker. Teams are both more efficient in their work and more inclined to use CMMS, whereas the old solutions tended to put them off because of their complexity of use.
For the company in general, this represents a significant gain in productivity, and therefore favors their competitiveness. Moreover, in times when telecommuting is encouraged, it allows maintenance managers to do part of their work remotely.
CMMS solutions are too dependent on the quality of the network?
Some companies’ fear, sometimes justified, is that the mobile CMMS becomes a burden when their wifi network (or the mobile network) is failing in some parts of the plants. In the absence of an offline mode, access to the application, and above all data entry, is indeed disrupted or prevented, thus complicating the task of maintenance teams. The expected benefits of a mobile CMMS are then greatly reduced.
Use your CMMS offline with Mobility Work
It is to answer this fear that Mobility Work has integrated to its CMMS application an offline mode specifically designed for an offline use.
How does Mobility Work’s offline CMMS work?
To avoid any data loss, the offline mode of the application allows to enter information even without any wifi or 4G coverage. This information is stored in the application on the smartphone or tablet, which then automatically updates it on the servers as soon as the device finds a stable connection.
This specific mode allows plants with limited wifi coverage to benefit from the advantages of CMMS in terms of traceability, speed of intervention and ease of use, without suffering the disadvantages in terms of network and connection.
Concretely, the offline mode of the Mobility Work application allows, without any connection :
- to access the equipment via a QR code scan ;
- to create a task for this equipment;
- to create an activity for this task;
- to modify the created task or to declare it as finished;
- to add a counter or a spare part in an activity.
What is the purpose of the offline mode of a CMMS?
In practice, few factories have fully effective network coverage, whether it’s wifi or 4G, in all of their premises. Basements, cellars, boiler rooms or other small or remote spaces are often a problem from this point of view.
Without offline mode, either the maintenance operator takes the risk that the data he enters will be lost, or he resorts to other ways of keeping it (e.g., writing it down by hand on paper) but then has to re-enter it when he reconnects.
With Mobility Work’s offline CMMS, maintenance teams can instead use the application in all circumstances, without worrying about whether or not they have a performing network connection.
The question of the use of a mobile CMMS in a context of limited network is an important and legitimate concern for many maintenance managers. It is to this that the offline mode of the CMMS application Mobility Work answers, designed to make its use possible in all circumstances and to eliminate any risk of data loss.
