A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is an application that allows for effective management of all types of maintenance activities. This includes maintenance budgeting for expenses such as labor, parts and miscellaneous costs for completion of work orders, replacement of equipment at the end of its useful life, as well as tracking of special projects and purchasing.

Budget Forecasting

Operating a maintenance department cost efficiently without having a plan that outlines the working budget is difficult. Often decisions are based on guesswork or emergencies with no real data to show when, where or how maintenance was performed in the past and what is needed in the future.

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by Robert Kalwarowsky Leave a Comment

What Are You Focused on in 2020?

As we’re kicking off 2020, I’m looking forward so I can deliver great content to you. I have been sharing a lot of personal content lately about my journey and I hope that it’s fueled something inside you to change your life for the better.

I’ll keep it brief this week but I would appreciate it if you filled out the survey here. It’s 5 easy questions about what you desire from me in 2020 and should take you less than 5 minutes. Thank you in advance for answering and for following my content!

Reliability Never Sleeps,

Rob

Fill Out Survey

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

No Surprises – Asset Management Made Easy

Good physical asset management is about making sure our physical assets do what we want them to do at optimum operating cost and tolerable levels of risk to safety, our environment and to your business.

Managing physical assets to achieve that in an industrial setting involves much more than simply buying and running a piece of equipment. [Read more…]

by Usman Syed Leave a Comment

Why a CMMS May Fail

CMMS: Computerized Maintenance Management System

Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is an integral part of today’s industrial & commercial maintenance operations. During the last many years there have been a lot of advances made on improving CMMS & many products are now available in the market. Evolution of CMMS functionalities have now made it a vital component of Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems employed by many medium & large organizations around the globe. EAM as a whole is not the scope of this article; rather the focus is only on the CMMS. [Read more…]

by George Williams 1 Comment

Xpo Fluke ii900 review

Product demo of Fluke ii900 Sonic Industrial Imager. This unit combines the ultrasound and the visual spectrum to allow the user to see compressed gas leaks. This product demo includes and unboxing, review of features, a test, and review of pros and cons. [Read more…]

by Robert Kalwarowsky Leave a Comment

Can You See the Forest for the Trees?

Last week, I was really struggling with anxiety and feeling like I haven’t made any progress in my personal development. I felt like I had taken 1 step forward and many steps back to return to a place where I was paralyzed in my own mind. My coach, Susan Hobson from Elite High Performance Coaching recommended that I put together a 2019 highlight reel of all of the things I had done that were meaningful in my development. [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

I Want it Now and I Want it Cheap

When it comes to information, entertainment, finding your way around and communications these days, we more or less literally have it all at our fingertips and available to us just about anywhere. We can even order and pay for coffee to pick up on our way from the commuter train to the office – no line ups for delays. We can book hotels, airlines and rental cars at the touch of our fingers with apps that show us the cheapest options. [Read more…]

by Alex Williams Leave a Comment

6 Maintenance Challenges CMMS Helps Resolve

As a provider of CMMS software and services for over 30 years, we hear common challenges affecting maintenance managers, technicians, teams and overall bottom lines for companies. Luckily, computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) was developed to help overcome these challenges. Read on to learn more about specific maintenance challenges and how features available within CMMS help resolve each one.

Common Maintenance Challenge # 1:

Need a better way to reduce unplanned downtime and have the ability to plan and schedule preventive maintenance (PM) more effectively.

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by Robert Kalwarowsky Leave a Comment

How Should I Start?

This morning, I was swimming and I was thinking about a question that I get asked frequently. The question goes like this:

Rob, my facility is very reactive, how do I start my reliability program?

Having a water polo background is something I rely on when I embark on new projects. I didn’t become a better swimmer by reading, watching YouTube videos or planning to become the best swimmer. I got better at swimming by swimming. I don’t discount the value of a coach, teammates or a plan (I had a coach and a team) but at the end of the day, you need to start. [Read more…]

by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

Business Cases for Asset Management – Part 2

This is the second blog in a two-part series that explain how to present Capital Asset Management and Maintenance Improvement programs to the various decision groups who speak different “languages”. Your finance people speak in terms of revenue, costs, return on investments. They see things as figures and financial statements. Somehow they need to translate your operational or functional benefits into dollars in order to truly support your ideas. [Read more…]

by Robert Kalwarowsky Leave a Comment

Twas the Night Before Christmas a Visit from the CEO

(Inspired by the Poem by Clement Clarke Moore)

Twas the night before Christmas
When all through the facility
Not an engineer was stirring
Not even in reliability

The KPIs were hung by the lunchroom with care
In hopes that the plant manager soon would be there
When out on the plant floor there rose such a clatter
I sprang from my desk to see what was the matter

Away to the plant I flew like a flash
Put my PPE on and slammed my door with a crash
When, what to my wondering eyes should appear
But a man and eight junior engineers

With a white hard hat, suit and a shiny high vis vest
I knew in a moment it was the CEO, I guess
He spoke not a word but went straight to his desk
And walked right past the broken equipment that needs money to invest

And laying his finger aside of his nose
And giving a nod, up the stairs he rose
But I heard him exclaim, ere he climbed out of sight
Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night

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by James Reyes-Picknell 1 Comment

Business Cases for Asset Management – Part 1

Why are business cases so challenging? Improvement programs in Maintenance or Capital Asset Management can be incredibly difficult to “sell” to managers and executives. Even where there is a high level of dependency on physical assets and poor performance, making improvements is a tough sell. [Read more…]

by Alex Williams Leave a Comment

CMMS User Training Maximizes Efficiency

After you’ve purchased computerized maintenance management software (CMMS), your work is done. Implementation will be a breeze, all users will quickly learn the system and your organization will begin reaping benefits immediately. Although this scenario is possible, it’s very unlikely. Companies that carve out ample time for CMMS training typically experience the most success with their software.

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by Robert Kalwarowsky Leave a Comment

How Asset Management Impacts Your Happiness

Have you worked in a company that says they want to be world class in reliability but won’t make investments in training their people or their reliability initiatives?

Have you seen companies who say safety is a value, but you see people pressured to work in an unsafe manner?

These are examples of misalignment and violates a concept in asset management. In asset management, aligning decisions with the company’s purpose & objectives is how to get the most value out of your assets.

What does this have to do with my happiness?

I do agree that working for a company that says one thing but acts another way is frustrating and can impact your happiness (mostly through disengagement), but that’s not I want to talk about.

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by James Reyes-Picknell Leave a Comment

The Conscious Asset Framework – 4

Putting the Framework to work – steps 3 and 4

By James Reyes-Picknell & Uri Wittenberg

3. Planning

It is vital to get Planning right, so it will take some time to execute. This is where some of the philosophies, concepts and tools, conveyed during the Awareness portion in concert with past knowledge and experiences, will help assemble the overall implementation project plan with all its pieces. It should consider cross-functional daily interaction between all areas in the organization vital to the successful operation of all business essentials. [Read more…]