CMMS (computerized maintenance management system) is the main tool of the maintenance department: recording and monitoring operations, inventory management, history, communication, etc. As it is intended to be at the heart of information, its relevance and its many benefits for the rest of the company and its profitability do not have to be proven. While its primary function is to improve maintenance management and planning, the implementation of such software also concerns your production services: intervention request management, first-level maintenance, etc. are all subjects associated with production that can be managed in your CMMS software.
CMMS and Production: what uses?
In this article, we will focus on the various possibilities offered by a next-gen CMMS solution such as Mobility Work and the consequences of its implementation on your company’s production management.
Conflicting relationships between the two departments
The two departments – production and maintenance, although intrinsically linked, often have difficulty communicating and achieving a balanced relationship. Indeed, production evolves in a context of uninterrupted pressure exerted by the search for profitability and productivity and by the expectations of increasingly demanding customers, and transfers some frustrations due to a lack of flexibility of the maintenance department, especially since it is more often considered as a cost center rather than as a profit center. For its part, maintenance often is overwhelmed and struggles to prioritize intervention requests. The most frequent criticisms concern in particular availability, reactivity, lack of information or the intervention time.
Time and communication are thus at the heart of this difficult relationship, which is essential for the smooth running of the plant. To solve this situation, it is therefore necessary to use all the tools likely to facilitate exchanges between these two departments. Since the maintenance management software is intended to be the heart of the company’s information, it is particularly suited to this function.
▶︎ Did you know that? “Production” profiles on Mobility Work, maintenance management platform, are not charged. Add as many technicians as you want and improve the responsiveness of your maintenance team by immediately reporting failures in your network’s newsfeed.
Monitoring production requests
Repairs, new work improvement request or safety issue on a piece of equipment: these various subjects, which were previously managed in an intervention request book and then transmitted to the maintenance department, punctuate the daily life of the production manager. However, once these paper requests have been transmitted, how can they be monitored and taken into account by the maintenance department?
This is why it is preferable for the production department to modernize and optimize its request management by formulating them directly in the CMMS software (through task creation). Sharing a single communication channel reduces communication failures and brings the right information back to the source. The potential benefits are quickly quantifiable: monitoring request status, information on the operation carried out, optimization of the time between the date of the request and the date of completion, etc.
The most common process for validating a production request is as follows:
- the production technician makes a request to his production manager;
- if it is validated, it is then transmitted to the maintenance manager;
- the maintenance manager decides whether to carry it out or not, in which case it will be archived and saved in the system, which can be retrieved if necessary (incident, etc.). If it is accepted, the request will be transferred to the technician(s) who must intervene, who will then be notified of the new production request validated by the maintenance manager.
Mobility Work CMMS’ tagging system allows you to tag these with “production request” so that you can quickly find the list. A notion of criticality can also be applied to it by creating different tags to define the urgency of the production request, for example: Level 1 Emergency, Level 2 Emergency, Level 3 Emergency, etc. It may also be relevant to add a tag to identify the department that requested this intervention, such as: Health, Safety and Working Conditions Committee, Environment, Quality, Safety, etc.
Monitor the progress of maintenance operations in real time
It is essential for production to be able to monitor the progress of maintenance operations in real time: which technician or service provider has been assigned to this task? What are the deadlines? Has the operation been completed, or has it only been taken into account? A collaborative solution inspired by social networks such as Mobility Work solves potential communication gaps between production and maintenance through the newsfeed.
All news related to ongoing interventions are available from Mobility Work mobile application’s newsfeed, available on iOS and Android.
Available on the web and mobile application (iOS and Android), this dynamic flow fed in real time by technicians makes it possible to report on all maintenance operations performed. Production technicians have the right to view this newsfeed, but also the rest of the application: research, statistics, etc.
Manage your 1st level maintenance
Finally, to facilitate interactions, allow production to quickly solve minor problems while saving time for the maintenance department on more technical interventions, it is possible to plan a 1st level maintenance: filter cleaning, visual verification around the machine, readings, etc. These interventions, which are not very technical or non-technical, can be carried out directly by production technicians and are part of a broader process of transition from curative to preventive maintenance.
To do this, simply use the “maintenance plan” function of next-gen CMMS Mobility Work to plan the operations to be carried out by production technicians. In this way, the user will be able to access from his phone all the operations he has to perform on his machine, which may take the form of a checklist or a complete range of photos associated with the task. This approach makes it possible to pass on some responsibility to production operators on their machines while tracking all these operations in your CMMS software.
Mobility Work’s calendar feature allows you to schedule all your preventive and predictive maintenance tasks.
Tip: In order to simplify the entry of intervention requests or 1st level maintenance operations, we recommend you to use QR codes. The production operator does not need to search for his machine or the task he has to perform, but can simply scan the QR code of the machine related to the operation or intervention request.
The emergence of 4.0 maintenance management solutions allows the maintenance department to make a quick, efficient and sustainable transition to digitalization. The benefits are numerous: improved reactivity, productivity, working conditions for maintenance technicians and relations with other departments of the company. Production has everything to gain from this integration and even plays a key role in the restitution of information.
Mobility Work stands out from other CMMS because it defines itself as a maintenance management platform that aims to unlock the maintenance data value chain and to be at the heart of your company’s information system.
