Like industrial equipment or facility management, airports require tailor-made maintenance management due to their complexity. With many tangible assets spread over a large area in different environments, these infrastructures must therefore effectively monitor these assets and store spare parts in order to maintain them at an optimal level of service. To manage these airport assets, several solutions are competing for the market: CMMS (computerized maintenance management system) predominate, and mainly enable a company’s maintenance activity to be monitored, planned, recorded and rationalized. However, EAM systems (Enterprise Asset Management) are also competitive, particularly in the airport management field, because assets are at the heart of the company’s business objectives.
These two types of solutions are currently dominating the maintenance and asset management software market. However, the confusion between the two remains, due to many similarities and despite specific characteristics. In this article, we will help you distinguish these two solutions and choose the best one to manage your airport maintenance.
What is the difference between CMMS and EAM?
Designed in the 1980s, CMMS (computerized maintenance management system) software is the main tool of the maintenance department. Its objective is to monitor, and ideally to plan (preventive maintenance) and analyze maintenance activities and work orders, to improve their daily management, and to better control the related costs (equipment cost, spare parts and stocks, maintenance activities, etc.).
An EAM (Enterprise Asset Management) system has the same characteristics, and is designed to manage the company’s assets. Unlike a CMMS software, which is more focused on automating maintenance, rationalizing stocks and purchases, collecting and processing maintenance data and managing work orders, an EAM software puts assets at the heart of the problem; its main purpose is to extend the life cycle of the equipment under the most optimal conditions, to maintain the expected level of service and improve company profitability and performance. EAM systems therefore offer functionalities based on asset inspection and monitoring, carried out through periodic evaluations. They make it possible to organize and manage different topics and their interdependencies, such as maintenance and equipment life-cycle management, operation monitoring, performance and productivity, and financial resource planning.
Airport assets are at the very heart of commercial activity. It is therefore essential, both in the case of a CMMS and an EAM, to keep the asset catalogue and the inventory up to date.
Before choosing a solution, it is essential for the company to assess its needs and define its objectives, beyond the limits of capital and operating expenses imposed by financial services. No solution is better than the other, as it depends primarily on the specific needs of the airport. The management therefore needs to define the airport’s own needs in order to determine which type of software will be the most suitable.
What are the main benefits of a next-gen CMMS?
Improved cost management
Like industrial companies, airports will also quickly see many benefits after the implementation of a maintenance management software. The first main benefits concern cost reduction: better expense monitoring, and reduction of material and labor costs. Open APIs provided by such solutions allow you to connect different management software to your CMMS, including your ERP. Mobility Work, the next-gen maintenance management platform, was designed to be at the heart of the company’s information. It allows to cross data from many systems, including accounting and purchasing systems, for improved expenditure tracking and cost streamlining.
Improved KPIs monitoring
A CMMS software with a powerful analytics tool such as Mobility Work allows you to track your key performance indicators (KPI). Their analysis allows you to continuously improve equipment reliability and availability, as well as to control spare parts, in particular through the keywords analysis which highlights recurring problems on your machine fleet. The adoption of a next-gen and even mobile CMMS software is the perfect opportunity for many companies to make the transition from curative routines to preventive or even predictive maintenance routines.
Mobility Work’s calendar feature allows you to schedule all your preventive and predictive maintenance tasks.
Easier and more flexible management for your field technicians
Airports are distinguished by the diversity of their environments, both indoor and outdoor, the extent of the field covered, and the diversity of the assets and equipment of the machine fleet, including:
- Ramp slide
- Vertical transport
- Automated and roll-up doors
- Administrative buildings and ground service equipment
- Parking for aircraft, garages, and parking lots
- Runways, traffic lanes, bridges, signals
- Boilers, chillers and HVAC
- Lighting
- Plumbing
- Fuel infrastructure and tanks
- Fire-fighting systems and alarms
- Passenger terminals and luggage management
- Utility vehicles and buses for rental cars, etc.
Maintenance operators are increasingly mobile. Most next-gen maintenance management software provide a mobile version of their software to support field technicians, allowing them to report a failure and submit a real-time intervention requests to their management, or to enter all the information related to their intervention directly at the foot of the piece of equipment.
All news related to ongoing interventions are available from Mobility Work mobile application’s newsfeed, available on iOS and Android.
Technicians can therefore manage these interventions, issue parts, add comments, documents (photos, videos, etc.) to document the failure, update counters, etc. and finally close the intervention in order to notify their network of the completion of the task.
These applications also allow you to control your inventory: access your inventory, issue spare parts and keep your warehouse up to date for a better rationalization of your inventory and expenses.
How do I choose the best suited mobile CMMS software for my airport maintenance?
Before opting for a mobile CMMS solution, it is necessary to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, and to list beforehand the most essential selection criteria, including :
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price
Mobility Work is the most affordable solution on the market: 33 euros per month per user for administrator and technician profiles, and free of charge for service providers and production technicians.
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its accessibility (mobility) and the user-friendliness
Our solution is inspired by social networks, and places the user’s comfort at the heart of its approach.
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its ease of deployment
Create your equipment in less than a minute! Available in SaaS mode and cloud-based, mobile CMMS Mobility Work does not require any installation.
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the need or not to carry out training to use the software, and to encourage its adoption by technical teams
Mobile CMMS Mobility Work does not require any training.
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compatibility and integration with other company software, hardware or operating systems, or with previous CMMS and/or EAM software
Extract your old databases and connect your CMMS to your ERP using our open APIs.
A mobile CMMS software thus helps airport to carry out precise and efficient monitoring of their machine fleet, and supports them in improving their routines and recording essential information and documents. In this sense, a CMMS can support airports in monitoring their regulatory and professional certifications to ensure compliance with legal and safety requirements. It is therefore an essential tool for all airport services.
For more information on CMMS software and how they can help you improve your airport maintenance management, feel free to watch the video presentation of Mobility Work CMMS, or test the application for free for 7 days using your own data.
