Facilities maintenance software may not be the most glamorous
software on the block, but it can be quite revealing. For example,
maintenance software can provide you with valuable insights into
operations and show you areas that you can immediately improve. As a
result, you may be able to reduce downtime, slash costs, and gain that
elusive competitive edge. How can getting down to the nitty-gritty of
facilities maintenance do so much? It all comes down to information and
analytics.
Maintenance software
is useful in tracking your facility’s overall equipment effectiveness,
or OEE. In a perfect world, OEE would live up to its promise and your
organization would achieve its goal of perfection (100 percent
value-added work, 100 percent speed/capacity, and 100 percent perfect
quality). Unfortunately, few companies can lay claim to 100 percent OEE.
However, if you can improve your existing OEE rate, wouldn’t it be
worth doing?
Facilities maintenance software can address an important component of OEE: equipment downtime. By computerizing equipment maintenance tasks,
work, scheduled maintenance, and processes, you can equip your
maintenance team with the information it needs to anticipate issues,
perform preventative maintenance, schedule repairs, and reduce downtime.
This information can also improve productivity and streamline
processes, resulting in lower labor costs and less reliance on outside
contractors.
Analytical tools in maintenance software can also provide you with
the insight you need to make better decisions. For example, visual
dashboards could make trends more readily apparent than a stack of work
orders detailing unexpected equipment failures. Using this information,
you can have your team proactively inspect similar equipment for signs
of a looming failure. Analytical tools can also help you decide when
it’s time to retire and replace older or obsolete equipment instead of
repairing it.
Facilities maintenance software and the insights it reveals can play an important role in improving OEE and reducing downtime.