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| ARE YOU MANAGING MAINTENANCE OR IS MAINTENANCE MANAGING YOU? | |
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– Randy Brous, Senior Support Engineer
"Blessed is the person who is too busy to worry in the daytime and too sleepy to worry at night." – Unknown Sound like you? As a Senior Support Engineer for MPulse Software, there is probably nothing I hear more than how busy our customers are. It seems there is no end to the demands placed on maintenance engineering departments - from schools and colleges to hospitals and extended care, industrial laundry, food processors, manufacturing, and all the rest of you. It seems that, just when the mound of requested maintenance gets almost under control, a whole new pile of preventive maintenance shows up and the boss needs something moved/painted/rebuilt/screwed on/taken off immediately! How all of you keep this under control, and don't pull your hair out, is a constant source of amazement for me. Unfortunately, in my experience, this level of activity often leads to the maintenance management software becoming a hindrance to your just "gettin' 'er done." You are so busy running from fire to fire, trying to keep up on your PMs and satisfying everyone else's needs, that the clerical work gets placed on the back burner. Here are some suggestions for how to keep this important job a little closer to the heat. One of the biggest reasons I see people fall behind in MPulse is they have too many things open and happening. The burden of finding what you were working on, as well as writing down the steps, hours, and inventory used, simply becomes too overwhelming. Maybe the engineers will write it on the paper work order and maybe even put it in the 'inbox' for some other poor soul to type in. Eventually, the stack reaches so high that someone has to submit a safety request to build a scaffolding just to hold the pile! This kind of backlog leads to a work order list in MPulse with thousands of open work orders that have due dates from back when Eisenhower was in office! So, what do you do? How do you get back on track? The first thing to do is to think back to before you had MPulse and remember why you wanted to implement a CMMS in the first place. Good asset history, better tracking of PMs, and basic work management are at the top of most people's lists. So, redirect your focus on that backlog and don't worry so much about all the miniscule details. A work order that has been sitting incomplete in MPulse for a year isn't helping anyone... so, close it out. Don't worry about inputting every little detail before closing it - get the asset, as well as who completed it, on the work order and put it in history. The inventory used a year ago is irrelevant now because the stocking information has changed from what is was when the work was originally completed. Now, at least, you will see this work on the asset's history - maybe not all the little details, but you are moving forward. Next, take a look at all those open work orders - are they really "open"? MPulse provides you with status settings, priorities, and due dates for your work orders. Use them! They can help you manage that list of 1,000 work orders. A work order should only be open if there is actually somebody working on it! If the work order is waiting for parts, waiting for budget, waiting for the right time of year, waiting for the stars to align properly - simply set it to 'hold' and input the reason. Then you can go to 'list view' and filter out the work orders that are on 'hold'. Hey, that list of 1,000 work orders is down to 200! Then look at those 200 - do you have due dates? Are they real? These dates are not there to manage employees, satisfy bosses, or make you look bad. The dates are there to help you organize your work. Laying out the due dates on your work orders, in conjunction with priorities, will allow you to be in control of the process. Now, let's talk about scheduled maintenance, or PMs. I know, I know....ugh....but it's important. We all know how critical it is to properly maintain an asset and prevent breakdowns. The problem is simply that, in many environments, PM work gets pushed to the "when you have time" pile - and that happens a lot, right? You know you just sit around each day thinking, "Golly, I wish someone would call so I'd have something to do!" Not likely. So, you miss a few instances of your PMs and then, the next time you get a chance, you go into MPulse and you have 7,984 overdue scheduled maintenance items! Hmmm....gonna be a long weekend. But, seriously; are you really going to walk over to EQU-8897 and perform its weekly maintenance 12 times? Will it improve the life of the asset if you change the oil 9 times in a row? Or, worse; how about just converting all 7,984 PMs to work orders and, then, immediately closing them? Maybe no one will notice; the department was super productive that day, right? Remember, MPulse's purpose is to be a useful tool. . It's not meant to add another layer of red tape you have to wade through simply to get to your paycheck. To get your scheduled maintenance list back under control, you need to get it back to reality. Scheduled Maintenance Records in MPulse are not just "set it and forget it" - you need to go back and update the dates in order to keep them in line with what is really happening. Open the Scheduled Maintenance Record for that asset, change the 'Last Done Date' to a more current date, and create the one PM. Then, if you need to, add a note to the work order explaining the gap, or you can add it to the asset's comments. These steps will get the PM schedule current and should reduce those numerous overdue items to a more manageable list. Lastly, is the old saying, "What have you done for me lately?" Using a maintenance management software tool, like MPulse, requires a lot of clerical work. When you decide to implement any management system, you take on the need to write everything down. Are you getting any benefit from that? It is critical that everyone who uses MPulse finds something in the application they will use to make their day easier. Software is not here to make your life harder - there has to be some value to every stakeholder in order to justify the labor expense. These systems are not used so the bean counters can count beans more easily, or so the auditors can pick apart your hard work. You are creating valuable data in your CMMS and that data is not just for others. There are many routine ways that this maintenance data can help you with your daily job. Engineers can use MPulse for troubleshooting. For example; an engineer can review the history of an asset and use that information to find out if today's problem has occurred before. They can determine the last time the equipment had a PM performed, as well as who the last person was to work on it and whether or not he/she noticed the problem. Managers can use the information in MPulse to answer those pesky budget questions, keep track of what the engineers are doing, and compare vendor performance to make sure they're getting the best deal. Inventory control personnel can use all of this information for comparing item quality, monitoring the effectiveness of stock level control, and simply keeping track of what's on the shelf. These are just a few examples, but you get the idea. Keep in mind that this system has value to everyone using it and, in order to make the clerical burden easier to handle, you have to find something that makes it worth it for you. So, you just spent 15 minutes reading this article and are now that much busier! Hopefully, the suggestions I have presented will help you get control of your maintenance management system and, therefore, are worth the lost time. If there is one more piece of advice I could give you, it would be that MPulse is here to help. We work with hundreds of maintenance engineering departments every day, and have seen many impossible situations.Give us a call (800-944-1796), or send an e-mail, and let us help you develop a plan to get your maintenance under control. |