Improving competitiveness is an objective shared by a very large number of companies. With this in mind, they are constantly looking for new levers that will enable them to lower their operating costs. Reducing maintenance costs, which are generally a major expense item, is one of them.
But lowering the cost of maintenance means re-examining the entire machine maintenance process. It makes more sense to take a holistic approach and analyze the entire maintenance strategy than to look for small savings on an equipment-by-equipment or item-by-item basis.
Being at the heart of plant maintenance management, CMMS software is a subject that must be treated with particular attention. Having a modern solution adapted to today’s challenges allows you to make substantial savings thanks to your CMMS.
Reducing maintenance costs
What exactly are they and how to reduce them?
Quick definition of maintenance costs
They can be defined as costs that are directly attributable to maintenance. It also specifies that these costs can be analyzed by nature (staff, products and materials consumed, maintenance tools and equipment, subcontracting, etc.) or by destination (technical documents, preparation, interventions, storage, monitoring and management,
These direct costs are generally presented as opposed to the following indirect costs:
- downtime costs, which include the costs of lost production, non-quality, extra production costs, contractual penalties, etc., resulting from a failure;
- failure costs, which include the costs of corrective maintenance and the costs of downtime resulting from the failure.
Traditional techniques to reduce maintenance costs
Many methods, more or less relevant, have been proposed to reduce maintenance costs, particularly by Japanese companies.
The “KAIZEN philosophy”
Many Japanese organizations have adopted a corporate culture inspired by Kaizen, a Japanese management style. The general idea is not to view problems as failures, but rather as opportunities to improve. This encourages all departments of the company to be part of a continuous improvement process, also known as “lean”.
The “Kanban” method
Also coming from Japan, the Kanban method is a special way of managing stocks and consists of applying a just-in-time production system. By handling customer requests “just-in-time”, thanks to a reactive production team and suppliers, it allows to reduce production, storage and lead time costs. Applied to maintenance, it is inefficient or even counter-productive.
Learning how to detect malfunctions
Many maintenance specialists insist on the importance of anticipating malfunctions effectively. These can lead to machine downtime, insufficient efficiency, material losses, delivery delays or product quality defects.
Analyzing malfunctions helps to identify their causes and avoid them in the future. To do this, rethinking the organization of production and maintenance seems indispensable. But all this cannot be considered without a thorough reflection on technical and technological tools and on the adoption of modern, efficient and intuitive CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) solutions.
Lowering maintenance costs thanks to the next-gen CMMS
The latest technological advances, particularly in the areas of mobility and Big Data, have led to the emergence of a next-gen CMMS, the adoption of which considerably reduces the costs associated with maintenance.
Managing equipment more easily
The first advantage of CMMS software such as Mobility Work is the fact that it’s a mobile tool. Accessible from any device (computer, smartphone as well as tablet), the application can scan the NFC chips installed on each machine. All the information concerning it is therefore instantly available to the maintenance teams: location, components and spare parts, history of breakdowns and interventions, plans and associated images.
Mobility Work CMMS is based on a community of users who exchange and follow their plant’s activity thanks to the newsfeed
This feature allows considerable time and efficiency savings by facilitating the work of the teams. It also helps them work more effectively because they are better informed.
Preventive maintenance in the age of Big Data
Mobility Work CMMS allows an in-depth analysis of the maintenance path of each piece of equipment.
Thus, it enables the plants that use it to implement a particularly detailed and effective preventive and corrective maintenance strategy, which contributes to considerably reducing maintenance costs. The replacement dates for spare parts or the duration and nature of plant downtime can be optimized to guarantee optimum productivity.
Mobility Work is provided with an analytic tool to help you analyze all your maintenance data and adapt your strategy
The development of a preventive maintenance plan, the most relevant method for substantially improving equipment reliability, is therefore much easier with next-gen CMMS software.
Saving money with CMMS 4.0 work orders’ management
Work orders are at the heart of any CMMS. They are used to initiate, monitor and record all maintenance-related activities. Maintenance orders contain detailed data for each maintenance task and provide information that is crucial to its effectiveness.
By adopting a CMMS solution such as Mobility Work, a company enables its maintenance teams to be much more complete and rigorous while writing and analyzing work orders, or “tasks”. They can thus provide, among other things, detailed instructions for each stage of the intervention, material and labor costs, the life cycle of the work order etc.
When the work order is completed, this information can be used to track machine maintenance costs directly from the CMMS software. It also tracks the time spent on different tasks and activities as well as the cost of materials.
It is therefore possible to make very substantial savings thanks to your CMMS. Much more concrete and efficient than general, fuzzy maintenance and production improvement methods, next-gen CMMS software brings precise and powerful tools to field teams and managers in charge of maintenance and its improvement, while making their work easier.
