Improving Maintenance Metrics with Cloud CMMS

Keywords: Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS), Asset Management, Asset Performance Management (APM), Artificial Intelligence (AI), Reliability, AI Enabled Maintenance, Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)

Summary

Globally, a shared issue among industrial organizations  is the task of handling assets and infrastructure. As the technological scene advances, the broad implementation of Asset Performance Management (APM)  solutions becomes increasingly feasible and more impactful, aiding both executives and engineers in actively overseeing their assets. With the transition to advanced APM practices, professionals are paying more attention to maintenance metrics such as Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) and Mean Time to Repair (MTTR).

Recently LLumin Inc., a leading cloud computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) provider, briefed ARC Advisory Group, and shared how they are leveraging newer technologies to help organizations improve key APM metrics and achieve better success with their APM initiatives.

Enterprise Asset Management: Core of a Successful APM Strategy

Enterprise Asset Management (EAM), which involves consolidating maintenance activities and asset information to make asset management processes easier and more streamlined through automation, is considered a must-have solution to ensure effective asset and infrastructure management. EAM solutions are progressing well beyond the traditional work management foundation. These solutions continue to evolve from their modest roots that were initially based on paper-based processes that focused on work order scheduling and documenting work history, then migrating these functions to computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS). Now, modern day CMMS solutions offer opportunities to extend beyond simple work orders, with advanced features. These changes are driving increased adoption for advanced CMMS capabilities to work more in unison and on par with advancements in adjacent manufacturing and operations technologies.

Modern-day CMMS Brings Flexibility

According to LLumin Inc., its leading CMMS solution, called CMMS+, delivers much more than a standard CMMS solution. The company has leveraged digital transformation technologies to offer advanced cloud and mobile first solutions that deliver proactive asset management, enable cross-functional business processes, and integrate with existing business systems and applications.

Digital transformation advances enable benefits that are motivating companies to adopt a CMMS system or if they already had a CMMS, to upgrade to a modern CMMS platform. In the last few years, the biggest momentum has been brought on by proliferation of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the software as a service (SaaS) model. These factors have really pushed CMMS adoption forward and infused new life into this market.

Edward Garibian, CEO of LLumin Inc., shared with ARC major benefits that can be realized through its SaaS based CMMS+ solution. The SaaS model offers numerous benefits, first of all with lower upfront cost compared to on-premises solutions, CMMS is becoming affordable for mid-tier organizations, which are especially interested in keeping their capital expenditure low. Another major benefit of the SaaS model is that it is easier to scale. When it comes to asset management initiatives, scaling has always been a major challenge for organizations. SaaS solutions provide greater scalability and flexibility compared to on-premises deployments. SaaS solutions let users access the system from anywhere, anytime, and on a wide range of devices. This lends greater flexibility to organizations with multiple sites and a widely distributed workforce.

Speed to Uptime and Improved Maintenance Metrics

In the event of equipment failure, multiple visits to the site/equipment may be necessary to inspect and diagnose the problem, identify the needed parts and skills, and then implement the repair. Scrutiny from management can sometimes push maintenance teams towards making quick fixes and repairs by an unskilled technician as well as preventative maintenance tasks that may not be thorough, leading to recurring issues and increased downtime. This can decrease the MTBF, which means the assets are failing sooner, and increase the MTTR, which means it is taking longer to fix the assets.

Advanced solutions such as LLumin’s CMMS+ are able to address these challenges by incorporating criteria-based work management functionality. This feature allows incorporation of notification workflows and escalation. Essentially, a rules-based approach to notify the right resources at the right time based on an event or incident to ensure the communication was clear and back this up with escalation and follow up.

Further, when maintenance is based on predetermined calendar-only intervals, it can lead to unnecessary checks and yet result in unforeseen breakdowns. By incorporating condition monitoring and predictive maintenance triggers with predefined actions, instructions and notifications, CMMS+ allows for maintenance plans and actions based on actual equipment conditions, not set timelines. This practice streamlines maintenance and improves MTTR as repairs become more targeted and efficient.

Renewed Focus on Team Collaboration with Modern CMMS

Industrial organizations are looking to improve collaboration among their employees in order to achieve higher productivity. LLumin’s advanced CMMS+ software especially focuses on improving collaboration among employees. The company’s browser-based CMMS+ application provides a centralized database and platform with effective productivity tools that significantly improves inter-departmental communication through seamless information flow between people and systems. 

Without a scalable centralized maintenance system, organizations are not able to effectively track and record the performance of assets over time. Many organizations are still using paper-based work orders, these paper-based documents can be easily lost or damaged. Although some organizations also want their employees to maintain spreadsheets, this is creating additional work for their employees. With LLumin’s cloud-based solution that can be accessed easily on any mobile device, maintenance staff can easily update asset and work records from anywhere in the field and make sure that all the key information is saved and easily accessible to anyone within the organization.

Not having a central system -- and one that does not integrate easily with other existing systems -- can lead to inefficient scheduling processes. When different teams are using different calendar systems and using emails, phones, messages to create schedules in silos, it can lead to inefficient planning, delayed repairs, higher MTTR levels, and ultimately longer downtime periods. CMMS+’s criteria -- enabled work order management and scheduling tools ensure all key personnel have real-time access to work orders and all associated stakeholders are continually updated with status and task information. This ensures maintenance activities can be scheduled quickly and completed effectively to help improve MTTR and reduce downtime.

To facilitate collaboration, LLumin has focused on tight integrations with other key operations and business systems such as MES and ERP, along with machine control systems, and IIoT platforms. This not only simplifies maintenance for staff but also ensures one version of the truth prevails through all systems. For example, when an operator initiates a downtime event in MES, a work request is sent to CMMS+, after that a work order can be created and completed in CMMS+ and then asset status is updated in MES. This seamless process ensures that key information and statuses are current and all key information is accessible throughout the organization.

Taking Collaboration to the Next level with an AI-enabled CMMS

One of the features that LLumin has incorporated with embedded artificial intelligence (AI) are action buttons that provide supervisors quick insights into root causes of delays, degradation, labor anomalies, forecasted asset failures, and more. This combined with all the criteria and workflow-based architecture within CMMS+ truly enables superior collaboration among internal and external stakeholders and also drives ongoing learning and continuous improvement. The company further continues to add AI-based enhancements to its CMMS+ solution.

Conclusion

By focusing on improving key maintenance KPIs and leveraging advanced solutions that help them achieve their targets, organizations can bring in notable gains in achieving operational efficiency, decreasing downtime, and improving asset longevity. While many asset management solutions are available today, those that are built on IoT, mobile, and cloud first are creating outcomes that truly accelerate and transform organizations in their asset and operations digitization strategy.

Mid to small sized organizations can now also get a quick jump on the digital transformation journey, thanks to SaaS based solutions, which have made cloud software much more cost-effective compared to on-prem versions. Cloud CMMS solutions are faster to implement, easier to use, and achieve quick ROI. With its feature rich, simple to use and easier to implement SaaS based CMMS+ solution, LLumin is in an excellent position to help forward looking organizations that are looking to improve their maintenance metrics and achieve success with their APM programs.

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