CMMS Software: Improve the management of your company’s tools
As any other industrial company, you might possess tools which allow you to produce pieces for your clients, but you don’t know how to maintain them. However, tools are indispensable in the production chain. They can be named differently from one company to another, whether they are molds, pattern plates, core boxes, matrix, etc. Also, some companies actually own their own tools, some other share them with their clients, and sometimes, the client owns 100% of them. Tools are usually managed by maintenance methods service, and are maintained internally. Unfortunately, monitoring tools maintenance operations is very unusual. In the best situation, operations are monitored on an Excel file, and in the worst case, no traceability is available at all. Many clients of Mobility Work CMMS software are using our app to improve the management of their industrial tools. We are going to provide you with a few tips to enable you to improve your tool management.
Tools are just like equipment
The very first thing to do is first to register all your tools in the CMMS software, just as if they were equipment. As a matter of fact, tools may be considered equipment, and possess the same feature. You may:
- Schedule maintenance operation
- Monitor interventions
- Upload documents related to the tools
- Monitor operations in course
- Analyze the intervention total time
To do so, you can register your tools following this example:
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Name of the piece of equipment: Type of tool – Name of the client – Tool number
The tool number is a critical permanent feature which will allow the operator to sort out tools quickly. As a matter of fact, companies usually own more than 1,000 tools, which are relatively similar and very difficult to distinguish from one another. Furthermore, operators are looking for tools in their CMMS software using this particular tool number.
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Equipment description
This field gathers all the information regarding your tool which can be useful to the operator: dimensions of the tool, geographic area, particular instructions, etc.
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Cost center
This field corresponds to the financial or geographic division of the tool. We recommend you use a client code in order to obtain the time spend per tool and per client in the analytics tool of your Mobility Work CMMS software.
You can also use a tagging system in the Mobility Work app to tag some of your tools with specific terms. This way, you will be able to quickly obtain all the equipment with the same tag, and to schedule a maintenance plan in your CMMS software for all of them. Furthermore, each time a maintenance technician carries out a maintenance operation on this tool, the tag will appear automatically on the work order.
NFC chips QR codes on your tools
To identify tools more easily, operators may use NFC chips or QR codes. This allows them to reduce the possibility of making a mistake on an intervention data entry on the wrong tool. The maintenance technician stands in front of the tool, then scans the NFC chip or the QR code, and then the Mobility Work CMMS mobile app will automatically recognize the tool on which the operator is working.
You may set up NFC chips and QR codes to execute a group of actions: entering a maintenance intervention, triggering an intervention request from production, opening a range of maintenance operations or a document (PDF, picture, video, etc.).
Depending on your industry sector, you will be able to choose between NFC chips and QR codes. NFC chips are more suitable for dusty environments. They also are more expensive than QR codes (around 30 cents for NFC chips against nothing for a QR code).
Integrate your plans
Many methods department who are using Mobility Work CMMS is used to upload tool related documents on their equipment pages. This way, the technician willing to obtain information can easily access plans, dimensions or any other technical information on his tablet or smartphone. You can add 3D plans in PDF, which allow the operator to visualize the piece and to access all the necessary information. You can also integrate multimedia files on maintenance operations, a picture or a video for example, which will allow other technicians or managers to get a better understanding of the problematic.
With Mobility Work CMMS, maintenance teams organize their workday thanks to the agenda
Schedule and carry out maintenance operations
Once your tools have been created, technicians will be able to quickly register the maintenance operations in the CMMS software, providing all the information required: the problematic, the nature of the operation, the intervention, the realization date, and the time spent. Sharing operations on the newsfeed will allow other operators to be informed in real time about the status of the works, and to quickly access intervention records on any tool.
Schedule maintenance operations in order to schedule calendar interventions on your tools. That way, the operator will be able in a few seconds to access his daily, weekly, monthly or yearly operation planning.
Analyze your intervention time
Mobility Work allows you to make tool management easier for your team and to generate analysis using the integrated Big Data tool: time spent per client and per tool, intervention workload on each of your tool, maintenance cost per client, etc.
In case of litigation with the client, we provide you with an easy way to easily justify every maintenance operation or to negotiate the purchase of new tools.
Mobility Work is a next-gen software, whose goal is to put the CMMS at the heart of the company. Flexible, mobile and user-friendly, this unique tool allows you to centralize all the relevant information for your activity, regardless the type of equipment (machines, spare parts, buildings, facilities, and property assets, tools, etc.). Mobility Work allows companies to gain time, efficiency and productivity. For more information, do not hesitate to request a presentation.
You are interested in maintenance management and would like to learn more about this subject in order to increase your productivity and save costs? Let’s plan a free online training with our team!