Managing a building, a production plant or any other type of facility is a complex process that influences the entire business. If maintenance management is not equipped with the right tools and preventive strategies, there will eventually be an increase in costs. This is where the advantages of using a software for maintenance comes in.
With each passing year, we see that the digital transformation of the maintenance department of companies is a constant trend and that the lack of control of operations carried out in equipment and installations translates into significant losses for companies.
It is in this context that the importance of using a software for maintenance stands out. The implementation of this software has been growing both in small, medium and large companies, as an essential tool to manage and control equipment maintenance more efficiently. This platform centralizes and makes available all the information in real time and, in addition, provides a considerable increase in the life cycle of the equipment – through the creation of preventive maintenance plans with recurring alerts -, which translates into a significant reduction in related costs. with maintenance.
Maintenance software brings together fundamental benefits for the daily maintenance department of any organization, however, one of the most noteworthy is the possibility of obtaining a global view of the status of all equipment and ensuring the timely maintenance of the most critical assets. .
With the support of this software, professionals in this area can:
With the CMMS software, you can create technical records for each piece of assets, with images, technical specifications, certificates, and warranties, among others, to facilitate access to information. This platform also allows you to check the availability of each asset, store records on the maintenance activities performed – maintenance history – and monitor the status of breakdowns.
CMMS software helps you define tasks and create preventive maintenance routines with pre-established deadlines to avoid unexpected failures and breakdowns. By having a preventive maintenance work schedule, it becomes easier for maintenance professionals to check scheduled tasks and pending work.
The mobile app provides the main functionalities of the software from a smartphone or tablet. It allows consulting and changing work order statuses, consulting the agenda and the respective daily tasks, as well as accessing information about the assets simply and quickly, anywhere.
Technology is increasingly easy to use and there are several possible integrations between maintenance management software and other systems to ensure bilateral synchronization of all relevant company data. You can centralize on a single platform all information about equipment, maintenance plans, tasks, spare parts, and resources.
One of the biggest advantages of the maintenance software is the possibility to obtain reports about the maintenance costs for each piece of equipment, in a determined period of time, with information about the maintenance request and the time dedicated until its conclusion. The software allows you to create reports with the most relevant data from your company’s maintenance cycle.
Software like Cegid Valuekeep allows you to reduce costs of your company’s operations and increase the life cycle of equipment through preventive maintenance. In addition, it reduces unnecessary spending on inventory and purchases, as well as monetizes assets and saves on unscheduled maintenance.
The CMMS solution also enables you to track work status, monitor assets, anticipate problems, and generate corrective and preventive maintenance plans.
These are some of the advantages of using a maintenance management tool, which allows managers and technicians to work proactively and increase the productivity of the entire company.
Revolutionize your company’s maintenance management with Valuekeep. Our 100% web and cloud solution is adaptable to the complexity and needs of any business, with different subscription plans.
Schedule a demo of the Valuekeep CMMS software now!
Companies are confronted with a seemingly simple question regarding the maintenance department: “What kind of platform should I use to manage maintenance operations? Cloud CMMS or on-premise?”
In the past, companies used to install software on a computer or server, but with the cloud that pattern is currently changing. Companies are increasingly replacing on-premise solutions with cloud solutions, as they are more accessible.
The main difference between these two solutions lies in the implementation process. While the cloud maintenance software data is stored in the vendor’s data center and the platform is accessible through the internet, the on-premise software is installed on the company’s server, which means it is only accessible from there.
For that reason, cloud software may be the most beneficial in our current digital age, since it allows access to data through a simple Internet connection, anywhere, in any computer or smartphone. It also represents lower costs for the company because it is no longer necessary to install the software on a local server. With a cloud solution, the information is always online, that is, available anywhere and in real time.
On the other hand, on-premise software is installed on the company server, which means the information is only available on the local computer or server. To access the organization’s data, employees need to use the company’s computer or server, without needing an Internet connection.
Despite the differences, both are focused on streamlining the maintenance management process and have an impact on how the company performs and manages its operations.
Even though these two solutions go hand in hand when it comes to improving processes, the future of maintenance lies in the cloud.
With cloud maintenance software, employees can access company data anywhere, from a computer or smartphone. This way, the cloud solution is a decisive tool to develop a maintenance strategy based on efficiency, speed and simplicity.
MTTR and MTBF are two important maintenance metrics in asset management. Learn about these key performance indicators for first-class maintenance and how you can calculate them with maintenance management software.
The Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) is the average time taken to repair an asset and one of the most common metrics used by maintenance managers. As the name suggests, the MTTR represents the average time is necessary to perform troubleshooting and repair a piece of equipment where a failure occurred, returning it to its initial operating conditions. The maintenance time of an asset starts when the incident occurs and ends when the equipment resumes its normal operation.
This metric is a critical indicator of how an organization can respond to a problem and solve it efficiently.
The MTTR is the result of the total corrective maintenance time divided by the number of maintenance actions over a given period. It is calculated using the following formula:
MTTR: Total Corrective Maintenance Time / Number of Repair Actions
From this formula, we can quickly understand that the MTTR is determined by two variables: the total corrective maintenance time (which means – the total time spent repairing the equipment) and the number of repair actions. To reduce the MTTR, you have to be aware and try to reduce both these factors.
The maintenance software will record the date and time when a piece of equipment is reported as inactive for repair purposes in its database. The maintenance solution calculates the time taken to repair the asset until it returns to its normal operating condition. Then, you can access MTTR reports and track its evolution over time. You can achieve a more accurate MTTR calculation by splitting the downtime into its component parts – the time spent waiting for the technician, for the delivery of the required part, the duration of the repair, etc.
MTBF is the acronym of Mean Time Between Failures, which represents the average time passed between equipment failures. This is an important metric that indicates a period during which the unavailability of the asset must be managed.
In other words, the MTBF is the average time that the equipment works correctly between failures. The MTBF is a very important performance indicator for the most critical assets.
This metric does not provide for any scheduled maintenance operations such as inspections, recalibrations, or preventive part replacements.
While the MTTR only influences asset availability, the MTBF affects both availability and reliability.
The different factors influencing MTBF are mainly human. For example – was the machine installed correctly? Was the equipment properly designed and built? Have the previous maintenance operations performed by technicians contributed to this failure?
The formula for calculating the MTBF is:
MTBF= Total Available Time – Time Lost / Number of Shutdowns
The maintenance management solution has built-in MTBF reports and therefore, it is easy to directly analyze the data regarding this metric for any asset. When a piece of equipment is unavailable due to repair, you need to select the reason/incident that describes this situation. The possible reasons for classifying an asset as unavailable can be specified in the maintenance software settings. Once the equipment is repaired and able to resume operation, you can set this asset as available.
This information on the availability/unavailability states of assets is used to calculate the MTBF and, for that reason, must always be up to date.
Based on the MTBF, maintenance managers can understand which pieces of equipment are most prone to faults – which indicates that these assets may need more maintenance or even replacement.
As for the MTTR, the goal should be to reduce it. Reducing the MTTR depends on, on the one hand, performing preventive maintenance to achieve a lower number of faults and, on the other, reducing the time spent on repairs. The goal here is to act quickly and to prepare the technical team because the sooner they respond to an incident, the faster the fault will be fixed.
While the MTBF measures reliability, the MTTR is a strong indicator of the effectiveness of repairs. Together, these two metrics provide an estimate of how long a particular asset or location was unavailable. Analyzing the MTBF and the MTTR together also provides an opportunity to calculate estimates regarding production decreases or even interruptions during failures. The MTBF and the MTTR also allow for retrieving indicators on maintenance costs over a given period.
Want to learn more about how Valuekeep can help you calculate these maintenance metrics? Schedule a free demo.
Industry 4.0, also known as the fourth industrial revolution, is the current trend of automation and data interconnection in industrial technologies. It includes the Internet of Things (IIoT), Wireless Sensors, Cloud Computing, Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and Big Data. But what about Maintenance 4.0?
Without innovation, the maintenance department loses strength and responsiveness. Using sensors, IIoT, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence and other intelligent systems, we can quickly identify where failures are occurring. It’s possible to find out which equipment is being affected, what are the implications of these problems in the productivity and what is the best preventive maintenance plan to minimize failures. Therefore, it is important that the company’s maintenance plan is as optimized as possible to reduce these risks and losses.
Generally, when it is necessary to collect data on the state of the machines, we turn to technicians specialized in this area. In Maintenance 4.0, with the rise of new connected technologies, these tasks can be performed by machines, which maximizes the useful life of machine components and avoids failures. With Maintenance 4.0 technologies, data meets humans and not the opposite. Maintenance processes evolve from a preventive model to a predictive one, changing the focus from prevention to forecasting.
Some of the advantages of this new digital era include monitoring the investment and return on equipment, overcoming communication boundaries and projecting the organization onto the market. Big Data, for example, is a strong ally for maintenance focused on equipment reliability. Big Data technology, alongside Artificial Intelligence (AI), allows to determine with greater precision the useful life of equipment, the risk of failure and the respective impact on the system.
Preventive maintenance is based on the “prevention is better than cure” principle. As the name implies, it prevents the occurrence of failures in assets and equipment. This type of maintenance is carried out systematically, i.e., the equipment is inspected even if there is no sign of failure. This way, any failure is avoided as much as possible to ensure the proper operation and safety of the assets.
Predictive maintenance is based on the analysis of data collected through sensors and other technologies, which allow to measure a set of previously determined parameters and predict future behaviors.
Big Data is the term for the large volume of data – both structured and unstructured – that is part of companies. Big Data can be helpful in the search for insights to optimize the decision-making process and improve business strategies.
Many companies are currently investing thousands of euros in the development of artificial intelligence mechanisms. In the maintenance area, the cobots (robots that collaborate with human colleagues), the inspection drones and the cleaning robots stand out. These mechanisms are beginning to emerge quickly and play an essential role in the daily routine of the maintenance department.
The acronym IOT stands for Internet of Things. This technology refers to the ability to provide a permanent internet connection to devices or objects. With a connection, these devices become identifiable on the network and can exchange information in real time.
Cloud Computing is the provision of computing services, including servers, storage, databases, network, software, analytics and intelligence, over the internet (the cloud) to deliver faster innovations, flexible resources and scale economies.
The Valuekeep solution connects maintenance technicians, equipment and managers on a single platform that accelerates operations and ensures real-time monitoring and cost control. Since we are talking about a cloud-based software, it is possible to handle processes quickly, anywhere.
Construction is one of the most complex industries and, regardless of the scale of the project, there are many moving parts and dozens of processes and guidelines to consider. The last thing a construction company needs is to worry about its machines and vehicles being unavailable and unexpected breakdowns. Therefore, the implementation of a CMMS solution should be a priority for every company in this industry.
Maintenance management software (CMMS) centralizes and simplifies maintenance activities and helps companies manage equipment and assets such as machines, vehicles and infrastructure.
Considering the demands that construction projects place on equipment, the maintenance solution has a particularly important impact on the return on investment. By streamlining maintenance processes and centralizing all data on a single platform, it is possible to have a clearer and more detailed view of asset performance and, consequently, make better decisions regarding their replacement or repair.
Below, we highlight some benefits of maintenance software for the Construction industry.
Maintenance costs are one of the determining factors of return on investment in equipment and facilities. Some studies prove that disorganized maintenance operations can consume up to 40% of a facility’s operating budget. However, many managers continue to act in a reactive manner, which in the long run can prove more costly than investing in preventive maintenance strategies.
Controlling maintenance operations efficiently results in greater equipment longevity, i.e. a return on the investment made.
By organizing and streamlining maintenance processes, you get a clearer, more controlled view of asset performance. In addition, breakdowns are less frequent and, if they happen, are solved more quickly.
In this sector, it is necessary to maintain compliance with a series of indispensable standards that ensure the safety of employees. Maintenance software allows you to schedule and facilitate the process of inspections by recording in the system when and by whom the activity was performed.
This allows construction companies to prove regulatory compliance through reports on the inspections performed on the equipment.
Having a clear and accurate view of the availability of each piece of equipment is critical for companies’ productivity.
With CMMS software, managers can check if tasks were carried out correctly and within the established deadlines, as well as know if there are the necessary resources to conclude a certain operation. In this way, the maintenance department is able to increase equipment availability time, which results in greater productivity.
Expenses can also be minimized by keeping track of the repair history. This information allows companies to know when it is more favorable to replace equipment rather than repair it.
Using maintenance software streamlines communication between teams, which is key when managing different construction sites. Users can record notes about maintenance work, important asset information, inventory stock levels, and any instructions regarding work orders.
These are just some of the advantages of this type of management solution for companies in the construction industry.
Find out how Cegid Valuekeep can help you optimize the management of your company’s maintenance management processes! Schedule a free demo with one of our specialists now.
The acronym CAFM stands for Computer-Aided Facility Management and CMMS stands for Computerized Maintenance Management System. Although these two digital platforms have a few similarities, it is important to know how to distinguish them and understand the purpose of each software.
The main differences between CAFM and CMMS software are its scope and focus. CAFM helps the facility managers (FM) automate several aspects of the facility management, including the use of the real estate. On the other hand, CMMS software has features focused on the management of maintenance operations and is often part of the CAFM package.
CAFM software is a solution that aims to support facility managers in organizing, executing, and monitoring activities related to plant and workspace management, asset management, reactive and preventive maintenance services, room reservation, and other administrative support activities.
This digital tool helps facility managers find patterns and analyze different aspects regarding the facilities so that afterward they can make the right decisions.
Like CMMS, the CAFM software can record repair and maintenance information so that facility managers get a more accurate view of the company expenses. In addition, CAFM allows to access information on the condition of critical assets, view the work order and repair history, as well as keep the warranty record.
Finally, CAFM contains a supplier database that can be used to contract external resources more efficiently, when required. This component includes important data, such as the supplier location, certifications and contact information, as well as the ability to generate work order invoices and collect feedback on supplier performance, all in one place.
The CMMS software is a digital platform focused exclusively on managing maintenance operations related to equipment and facilities.
CMMS allows managers and maintenance technicians to obtain a more detailed view of maintenance operations: follow the costs of work orders, control breakdowns, access the asset history, record labor on critical equipment, among others.
Maintenance professionals have access to this information so they can make smarter decisions and carry out work orders more efficiently.
One of the strengths of CMMS software is the ability to automatically generate preventive maintenance work orders at a predetermined time. In fact, this allows both on-site technicians and facility managers to know exactly what the next working day will be like.
In addition, the data collected and stored in CMMS software helps maintenance managers meet regulatory and compliance requirements more easily.
Both CMMS and CAFM software are technology solutions that aim to optimize management processes. However, they have different activity focus, so it is important to know how to distinguish them and select the solution that best fits your business needs.
It is widely known that periodic maintenance prolongs the life cycle of equipment, keeping it in optimum condition. Find out how to optimize your maintenance plan!
However, a lack of regular maintenance often leads to equipment failure or, in the worst-case scenario, occupational accidents. This results in substantial costs to companies and increased operational downtime. How can we ultimately avoid this problem? This is exactly where a maintenance plan becomes essential.
A maintenance plan is a technical document which lists scheduled maintenance work for each piece of equipment. It provides guidelines for all maintenance activities, with a description of each task, its defined frequency and the resources required to complete it.
Maintenance work ensures that equipment keeps operating with the best possible performance, within its capacities, and in a safe manner, without anomalies of any kind such as strange noises or overheating.
As such, an effective maintenance plan ensures that companies are successful in the long term, since it improves the safety, reliability and productivity of each piece of equipment.
With regard to creating a maintenance plan, in order for it to be well-structured and have good results, we must bear in mind a certain information set which is indispensable to its fulfilment. Below is the information that should be included in every maintenance plan.
Next, we will present the five steps to be followed to create an effective maintenance plan for your company.
In summary, a maintenance plan determines which maintenance work must be done and how. It is based on the “why” of maintenance tasks and should be updated as data becomes more complete.
Using an asset management platform (CMMS – Computerized Maintenance Management System) significantly changes how maintenance plans are planned and managed. Following are some of the benefits of using technology to create maintenance plans for your company:
With maintenance management software, you can monitor the status of scheduled maintenance tasks for the plan in real time and ensure that they are done properly and in a timely manner.
With maintenance management software, you can set periodic maintenance tasks based on the mileage of a truck, or on the number of operating hours of a machine, for example. Any plan can contain one or more tasks, provided that they have the same frequency (daily, weekly or biannual maintenance).
Organizing maintenance schedules is essential, especially when several maintenance strategies are used within the same company. CMMS software gives managers an overview of all maintenance activities – both corrective and preventive – in order to prove whether the tasks are being done in the desired manner.
Are you familiar with Valuekeep? It is a cloud solution for managing maintenance operations for equipment and assets and is used by major Portuguese companies such as Luz Saúde, Casa da Música and Prozis.
Learn more about this user-friendly, flexible intelligent CMMS solution, and start prolonging the useful life of your equipment and assets, as well as cutting maintenance costs.
A Maintenance Backlog is an indicator of time that shows which maintenance jobs are needed and which have not yet been completed.
A Maintenance backlog is usually calculated in working days or weeks, and measures the time needed to perform outstanding maintenance operations. A maintenance backlog comprises both preventive and corrective maintenance tasks, as well as quality inspections or any other activity that is indispensable for the proper functioning of the assets.
The appropriate degree of this delay should be determined by the maintenance planning and control workflow.
While some level of maintenance backlog is acceptable, neglected tasks inevitably cause more breakdowns and downtime on assets. Consequently, breakdowns require immediate unplanned maintenance tasks which in turn disrupt scheduled activities. These interruptions in scheduling accumulate more backlogged tasks, which can turn into a vicious circle.
In other words, a maintenance backlog generates a list of tasks to be carried out during a given period and experiencing some delay is inevitable. If not, this may indicate overstaffing.
So the aim is not to eliminate the maintenance backlog completely, but to manage this process efficiently.
Delayed maintenance of higher risk assets is quite damaging; it can put the organisation in a risky situation. As a result, there may be various equipment failures/malfunctions and associated replacement costs, non-compliance with legal safety requirements and losses in company productivity.
Low-risk assets tolerate a longer maintenance backlog while in contrast, high-risk assets can only cope with a shorter backlog.
As it is a time indicator, the result of a maintenance backlog must be established in hours, minutes, days, weeks or months. It is therefore calculated from the sum of the man-hours of all pending, planned, scheduled and completed tasks; divided by the total number of available man-hours.
However, only the productive time of each employee should be considered, since technicians are not performing tasks 100% of the time. Therefore, before calculating the backlog, you need to measure the productivity of the team.
Thus, the overall average standard is considered to be 2 weeks, taking into account work during working days. On the other hand, if companies work without weekly interruption, the standard is 3 to 4 weeks.
Being able to calculate this maintenance indicator makes it possible to check the productivity of the team, as well as gauging the cause of delays in maintenance.
In addition, a maintenance backlog makes information clearer and more accessible to teams, so they can identify the points that need to be improved.
It is obviously difficult to calculate and control a backlog without the support of CMMS software like Valuekeep. This intelligent management system enables maintenance managers not only to keep track of the work that is outstanding, but also to check the deadline for completion. In this way, a manager can obtain total visibility on delays and breakdowns in the company’s assets.
Thanks to IoT, maintenance managers can predict when a failure will occur in the equipment fleet. Prediction is only possible with the arrival of new technologies such as sensors, which monitor the performance and deterioration of equipment over time. In this way, maintenance managers can track the condition of equipment based on monitoring and inspection data. This maintenance strategy is called predictive maintenance.
In this sense, this type of maintenance is a strategy that uses data analysis techniques to detect anomalies in equipment operation and possible defects, so that they can be resolved before failure occurs.
The following are the most used predictive maintenance techniques.
Predictive maintenance gathers information about the condition of equipment, based on historical and real-time data, that allows you to anticipate failures and calculate when intervention is needed. There are several key elements to a successful predictive maintenance strategy, such as IoT, artificial intelligence, and other integrated systems that allow different systems and assets to link together to share/analyze data.
Sensors installed on the machines allow sending data about the status and performance of the equipment in real-time thanks to IoT technologies, which enable communication between the machines and the analysis systems. The data that these sensors must measure and collect is related to the techniques used, such as vibration control, temperature, pressure, noise level, among others.
The storage systems in the cloud (cloud computing) allow you to apply data mining and recompile/analyze a large amount of data using Big Data.
Predictive models use machine learning technologies to establish patterns and comparisons, perform predictive defect analysis, and schedule maintenance interventions before failures occur. One of the most differentiating elements of predictive maintenance is to build and apply algorithms that provide a prognosis.
The techniques aim to improve equipment reliability through technology and best practices to increase productivity.
The main advantage of this maintenance strategy is to act in a timely manner, which reduces downtime and increases asset availability. On the other hand, it optimizes the equipment’s lifetime to the maximum, since maintenance is scheduled according to needs, it avoids wasting stock and manpower on unnecessary maintenance operations.
Predictive maintenance aims to define the best time to perform equipment maintenance, so that the productivity and reliability of equipment are as high as possible, without unnecessary costs.
Thus, the use of IoT is critical to the success of a predictive maintenance strategy, as is the use of sensors and other predictive maintenance techniques previously mentioned (vibration analysis, oil analysis, thermographic analysis, among others).
Although there are some disadvantages to this type of maintenance, such as high costs, need for specialized skills, and limitations of some equipment, this strategy allows maintenance managers to perform interventions only when is necessary. Thus, helping companies reduce costs, save time, and maximize resources.
From the same point of view, predictive maintenance reduces the volume of emergency repairs and the waste mentioned above, without hindering the company’s activity. In other words, downtime is planned well in advance, which allows for better maintenance, and helps control the maintenance budget.
Valuekeep maintenance management software is an essential tool to help you create and manage a more efficient maintenance strategy for your company. The Valuekeep solution offers you a range of features, two mobile apps and the possibility of integration with any IoT system, to optimise and streamline the maintenance management of your assets and infrastructures.
Every maintenance manager must have experienced situations where they have lost track of a work order or could not find the record of an operation they so desperately needed at that moment. CMMS software – Computerised Maintenance Management System – is the solution that eliminates these problems and keeps information about assets and maintenance operations centralised within a single system.
This management platform is responsible for simplifying and optimising all maintenance processes, making it possible to schedule and monitor all operations and keep a detailed record of work carried out.
CMMS software does away with the manual paper-based processes that often slow down the business and hamper team productivity. The program gathers all the information about the assets in the system – where they are located, what type of maintenance they need, which technician worked on them and when that intervention took place – and this makes the data more accessible and auditable.
By implementing a maintenance management solution, you will be able to manage all your equipment, scheduling and maintenance, as well as following up all work orders on a single digital platform, simply and effectively. All this produces positive effects on an organisation’s performance.
Maintenance managers can add an issue to an equipment record, describe it and assign a work order to a specific technician from a computer or mobile device. When the equipment is repaired, the technician in charge selects the work order as “concluded” and the manager is informed that the task has been carried out, through a notification on the platform.
Equally, there are teams that have to manage the maintenance of equipment that is 10 or 20 years old and, naturally, these machines have a long history of operations that must be recorded on the system to help technicians understand how the problem was solved last time. The CMMS software records all maintenance interventions in the equipment’s history, so that in the future, employees can see them again.
To help the department balance the maintenance teams’ workload, tasks need to be well scheduled and organised. For this, maintenance teams must be able to use a tool which helps them schedule and consult all scheduled operations. The software has a calendar which helps users record and consult all work orders, with the possibility of sending alerts to the people associated with the operations.
Every day, issues arise on which a maintenance manager needs to decide. In order to make the right decisions, it is important to be surrounded by as much data and reliable information as possible. Decision-making based on real data produces the best results for the organisation. This maintenance management solution has tools that facilitate this process and provide detailed management reports on the company’s entire maintenance cycle.
With this range of tools, maintenance professionals can quickly collect data from the software and synthesise all the necessary information into a single document, reducing the error rate and the risk associated with the actions the company implements.
Valuekeep CMMS is a great tool to include in your maintenance strategy. With this software, you can create work orders in digital format, control and monitor ongoing maintenance operations, create maintenance plans, and handle the work of technicians.
The need to reduce costs, streamline processes and increase the availability of facilities has led company managers to consider Facility Management a value-added activity.
You’ve certainly heard of Facility Management, but it’s not always easy to understand exactly what it means and what this term refers to.
The focus of Facility Management is a sustained and balanced management of facilities, ensuring proper functioning, good operating conditions, safety, and customer satisfaction.
In this sense, the maintenance of infrastructures is the responsibility of the facility manager. This role encompasses both the organization and maintenance of spaces, and the management of daily tasks.
Consequently, it becomes essential to have well prepared professionals, with solid knowledge, in order to increase the efficiency of resource use, building and facility performance, support top management and improve the results of the organization.
Thanks to the large number of assets to maintain in a building or infrastructure, maintenance undoubtedly plays a key role in managing these spaces. Mainly, because maintenance ensures that all the assets of an infrastructure remain well-maintained and functional over time. In addition, operations and maintenance almost always work hand in hand, with the goal of providing a safe and productive environment.
During daily FM operations, the maintenance team addresses unexpected issues, such as, fixing a gas leak or replacing a broken machine. Ideally, FM managers will be warned about these maintenance needs through a maintenance request system.
Infrastructure management considers not only daily maintenance needs, but also long-term ones. Following good maintenance practices, AVAC, electrical, plumbing, and security systems are monitored through regular preventive maintenance plans. Similarly, repairs can be anticipated based on predictive maintenance, although this type of maintenance is only possible in larger organizations.
From the same point of view, maintenance inspections are essential for FM operations. Through inspections, FM managers ensure that the workplace meets regulatory requirements, thus contributing to the safety of spaces and people.
Taking into account everything about building and infrastructure maintenance, it is obvious that there is great difficulty in tracking maintenance activities by hand. As a result, organizations are increasingly implementing maintenance management systems (CMMS) to monitor the tasks of internal teams and maintenance service providers.
Maintenance management software is a great ally for all industries that perform building and infrastructure maintenance, such as factories, hospitals, public organizations, among others. Find out how you can benefit from the use of the intelligent maintenance software Valuekeep when managing your buildings.
The objective of any organisation must, naturally, be to increase the levels of productivity and safety of its equipment and installations. For this to happen, equipment maintenance is essential to optimise and speed up all processes.
This involves various types of maintenance, including preventive and corrective maintenance. But let’s take it in stages…
Preventive maintenance, as the name suggests, prevents the occurrence of failures and breakdowns in equipment. This type of maintenance is done systematically, that is, the equipment is inspected even if it has not shown any sign of malfunctioning. In this way, any equipment failure is avoided as much as possible to ensure that assets function properly and safely.
Most companies have already adopted and understand the benefits of preventive maintenance practices, since the unavailability of equipment reduces organisations’ productivity, besides increasing operational costs. Although it is not possible to completely eliminate the existence of unexpected failures and equipment breakdowns, we should bear in mind that, whatever the size of the business, creating preventive equipment maintenance plans is a way of avoiding asset downtime as much as possible.
Drawing up and following these preventive task plans means reducing the likelihood of failures in equipment which is crucial to companies’ productivity.
Work orders are programmed as part of their maintenance plans, which allows managers to control operations and technicians to know in advance which parts and tools are necessary to guarantee a certain operation.
This type of maintenance helps extend asset life, increases productivity and ultimately lowers the expenses associated with maintenance.
Preventive maintenance can be divided into two main types:
In which situations is it advisable to use a preventive maintenance strategy? And when is it not recommended to use this type of equipment maintenance?
The probability of asset failure increases with time and use. In these cases, it is possible to schedule maintenance for the equipment. This planning allows you to increase the useful life of the asset and maintain productivity over time.
If preventive maintenance is based on scheduling, equipment that fails randomly is automatically excluded, because you no longer have control over these failures.
While preventive maintenance aims to prevent the occurrence of faults and malfunctions in equipment before they happen, corrective maintenance involves a series of technical tasks aimed at correcting faults in equipment that needs repair or replacement. This type of maintenance corrects existing errors in the equipment that needs intervention so that it can start functioning again.
These maintenance practices do not include maintenance plans and, as a consequence, the possible lack of spare parts is high. In addition, there may be no maintenance technician available to solve the problem immediately, as these occurrences are unforeseen.
Despite being unavoidable in some cases, corrective maintenance ends up making a greater financial impact, since it often implies prolonged unavailability of the equipment. The truth is that a significant percentage of these breakdowns can be avoided if preventive maintenance plans are adhered to within the established deadlines.
The main difference between these two types of maintenance is the time taken to repair the equipment or installation. With the corrective maintenance model, the operation is carried out only when there is a failure or malfunction, while with the preventive maintenance, as the name indicates, the equipment has maintenance plans to avoid/prevent the most complex failures.
There are several maintenance management solutions, such as Valuekeep, that help companies draw up and follow an effective preventive maintenance strategy.
There is a range of maintenance types that suit companies and even work best for different scenarios and needs.
In order to choose a successful maintenance strategy, it is essential to have a thorough understanding of maintenance management principles and practices, as well as the different types of maintenance that exist and the performance of assets and facilities. Although there is no perfect combination for choosing a maintenance strategy and obtaining the best results, most of the time the selection process encompasses a combination of the different types of maintenance, depending on the value and priority of each piece of equipment.
In summary, for a strategy to be effective, it must take into account increasing equipment performance and uptime while balancing the resources and costs associated with this process.
There are 4 major types of maintenance best known (and effective) to implement in a successful maintenance strategy:
The principle of corrective maintenance is relatively simple: repair equipment when it breaks down. Since repairs are not planned, it is a good method to use for equipment that is not essential for operations or has a lower cost.
On the other hand, if this type of maintenance is unused strategically, it can result in unforeseen stoppages when a critical piece of equipment fails. In other words, a strategy based solely on corrective maintenance means longer downtime and higher maintenance costs.
Preventive maintenance consists of the periodic inspection of equipment and planned maintenance operations at distinct intervals. The objective of this strategy is to extend the effective life of the assets and prevent the occurrence of failures and malfunctions.
Most organizations that operate this type of maintenance strategy use CMMS software to receive alerts about work orders when a preventive maintenance plan needs to be made. This procedure allows companies to automate most of the programming processes, which represent a key factor in this preventive approach. As the planning is done with due anticipation, it is easier to have the necessary parts and resources to complete each task.
Predictive maintenance consists of predicting failures before they occur so that maintenance is done at the right time. This type of maintenance uses data from machine sensors and intelligent technology to issue alerts to technical teams as soon as the equipment is at risk of failure. For example, a sensor can use vibration analysis to alert the team that a piece of equipment is about to fail, i.e. it must be inspected and repaired accordingly.
The use of CMMS software is the simplest way to implement a predictive maintenance strategy since this solution allows us to follow the meter readings. One of the great advantages of this maintenance strategy is the reduction of costs due to a greater perception of the performance and potential problems that can arise in the equipment. With access to sensor data, maintenance is determined by the actual state of the equipment and not by assumptions.
Failures are not always linear and reliability-centered maintenance addresses that. This type of maintenance analyzes all possible failure model for each piece of equipment and equally creates a customized maintenance plan for each piece of equipment. The key objective of reliability-centered maintenance is, as the name indicates, to increase the reliability or availability of the equipment so that a more effective predictive maintenance plan can be drawn up.
This strategy is considered a little more complex since it is necessary to analyze each piece of equipment to prioritize them based on their criticality. The most critical assets are those in which failures are more likely to occur or which will have greater consequences if this happens. As each piece of equipment is analyzed by itself, it may obtain as many different maintenance plans as it does equipment.
Reliability-centered maintenance is a sophisticated strategy in that it requires a maintenance team that dominates prevention, predictive maintenance, essential inspections, and that has access to reliable asset data.
As we have already mentioned, there is no one right approach to maintenance. To develop a strategy, you need to evaluate advantages and weigh the disadvantages of maintenance types and strategies, taking into account the type of assets in question and the impact of downtime on your organization’s facilities.
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These days, companies experience an emerging need to increase productivity and reduce costs. Faced with this situation, companies have invested in asset management to differentiate their businesses and make them more competitive.
But after all, is asset management the same as maintenance management? The answer is no. Both concepts are related and complement each other, but they have different objectives.
Firstly, it is important to be clear what exactly is an asset. Assets are any physical object that is under the domain of a certain organization, such as machines, equipment, office materials, tools, vehicles of the corporate fleet, among others. In general, assets are the material assets of the organization.
Asset management has a primary objective to coordinate the life cycle of assets. It is the set of activities designed to extract value from the company’s assets, which evaluates the opportunities, risks, and desired performance of each asset, to establish priorities. The focus is to maximize the effectiveness of assets throughout their life cycle, minimize failures, reduce losses, and maximize gains.
It is essential to comprehend the difference between asset and maintenance management. Although these two concepts complement each other, they are not the same.
Asset management refers to a management system between all departments involved in business processes, maintenance being one of these departments.
Maintenance arises from the need to keep equipment running, with maintenance plans up to date, costs controlled, and within the organization’s expectations. However, to achieve excellence in maintenance, it is essential to enter the asset management field.
If the objective is to optimize the availability of assets during their life cycle, reduce repair costs, increase productivity, and comply with regulations, it is necessary to follow the principles of asset management.
Asset management incorporates maintenance, helping in the process of defining the best strategies to be applied to each asset, to achieve the final objective. The better the asset management, the lower the costs associated with its maintenance.
Asset management is directly related to equipment productivity, providing better performance at the most reduced possible cost.
Besides the focus on the life cycle of the assets, establishing the smallest amount of necessary maintenance, and increasing the return on investment, asset management also provides other benefits to the organization:
Both asset and maintenance management remain not straightforward tasks, and it is laborious to manage everything in detail. This picture is even more rigorous when it comes to an organization that manages a large amount number of assets. To facilitate and support this process, there is the asset and maintenance management software.
This manintenance software allows you to monitor all the assets, obtain information in real real-time, plan and monitor maintenance operations, manage stocks, and provides several performance indicators so you can make better decisions.
Any management practice requires the definition of objectives and indicators to monitor the company’s performance. Basically, objectives express what is intended and indicators are used to quantify these objectives in numbers.
Maintenance Indicators measure the quality of operations to achieve established maintenance objectives, such as downtime reduction or cost reduction. They are reference indicators that make it possible to evaluate the evolution of the team over time, showing where the team is at and what it needs to do to achieve the objectives. They are also a good support to define the path towards continuous improvement of the Maintenance Department.
Also known as Maintenance KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) these indicators evaluate whether operations are aligned with the maintenance goals, like reducing downtime.
As already mentioned, the maintenance indicators vary according to the objectives and strategies of each company. However, there is a set of KPIs that are used more frequently, which are based on the following key factors:
In most companies, defining and monitoring maintenance indicators is part of a process that begins with the objectives set by top management. Once these objectives are established at the company scale, the maintenance manager can define action plans for the department, in line with global strategies.
To define the maintenance KPIs, the maintenance manager must identify the main negative points of the department. In this process, the areas that need to be improved should be considered, so that the team could improve the results. For example, the fact that there are several unexpected breakdowns in certain equipment, makes the maintenance team focusing much time on repairs. This is a point that must be worked on and improved.
Additionally, to define maintenance indicators, managers must put into practice the SMART method (Specific, Measurable; Attainable; Realistic; Timely) the most widely used technique to evaluate an indicator. Below, you can see what they mean:
Whatever the problem that prevents the company from achieving the defined goals, this is the first step you should take to improve efficiency and increase productivity.
Generally, maintenance KPIs fall into the following areas, along with the most used metrics in each category:
It is very important to keep in mind the distinction between KPI and maintenance metrics. Although they are similar, because both measure the performance of the company concerning the defined goals, establish ideal levels for the future, and work to achieve these goals, they are not the same thing. The main difference is metrics are a measure that calculates progress towards a goal and KPIs are the target numbers to achieve.
This difference can also be verified by the names: KPI stands for performance indicators, while a metric, by definition, means a measurement system or standard.
Calculating and monitoring these indicators are very important for company managers to optimize processes and obtain in-depth knowledge to understand what goes less well and where there is room for improvement. Also, having access to accurate data automatically improves decision making.
If you can meet the established maintenance indicators and monitor their evolution, it means you are more likely to have a reliable maintenance management system.
Valuekeep CMMS is a great tool to include in your maintenance strategy. With this software, you can create work orders in digital format, control and monitor ongoing maintenance operations, create maintenance plans, and handle the work of technicians.
The success of business management in any sector necessarily depends on efficient maintenance management. In factories, hotels, shops, restaurants and other buildings, maintenance management plays a key role in maximising the operational efficiency of equipment and facilities.
Maintenance management can be defined as the process of maintaining a company’s assets and resources and its main objectives are:
This management involves regularly monitoring the operation of machines, equipment, installations and tools. It also prevents, for example, production stoppages due to broken equipment and wasting resources on inefficient maintenance processes.
To avoid being surprised by unforeseen events and technical failures that can disrupt the company’s workflow, maintenance management enables managers to control all processes so that everything flows as intended and without any unexpected failures.
One of the main objectives of maintenance management is to plan and schedule work efficiently. It is necessary to draw up the most appropriate maintenance strategies for equipment and installations, such as Preventive and Corrective Maintenance.
Using these strategies, it is possible to eliminate technical failures and keep equipment, machinery and installations working and available.
With normal wear and tear, equipment can become less efficient. Proper management of preventive maintenance will therefore ensure the best operating conditions for the equipment and, in addition, increase its service life.
Planned preventive maintenance reduces downtime caused by equipment malfunctions. In this way, time spent on emergency repairs and replacements can be saved.
Through regular preventive maintenance, not only is the operation of the equipment guaranteed, but it is also guaranteed to operate safely. This also results in less risk for the technicians who are in daily contact with the equipment.
The role of the maintenance manager is to identify the ideal type of maintenance for each piece of equipment. We will therefore list the main ones and how they apply in each case.
The main objective of preventive maintenance is to reduce future failures, prevent a problem from occurring and avoid corrective maintenance. It must follow a pre-established deadline according to the type of equipment, use or time.
This type of predictive maintenance focuses on implementing a culture of constant monitoring of equipment and assets. It does not require a fixed schedule of inspections. Instead, it relies on the use of software and instruments to assess vibrations, ultrasound, visual inspections, temperature levels and so on.
This type of corrective maintenance corrects existing faults detected during inspections. A new appointment is then made to carry out the repair. This is usually the most costly type of correction because it requires temporary shutdown of the equipment.
To reduce maintenance costs, it is essential to follow the maintenance plans established for each piece of equipment, in order to guarantee its operation and avoid potential breakdowns and failures. Here we talk about asset management, that is, defining the best strategies to be applied to each asset in order to achieve the final goal: the more efficient the asset management is, the lower the costs associated with its maintenance will be.
CMMS solutions automate the generation of maintenance reports, allowing maintenance professionals to make decisions faster, without having to search for information in piles of paper or Excel files. On the other hand, the time spent by technicians in the manual elaboration of these reports is reduced and, consequently, the probability of data errors is reduced.
The maintenance indicators measure the quality of operations to achieve the defined objectives, such as reducing the downtime of equipment. They allow you to evaluate the evolution of the technical teams’ performance over time and, this analysis allows the manager to know at what level his team is and what strategies he should bet on to achieve the next goals. Maintenance KPIs are, therefore, a good support to define the path to continuous improvement of the Maintenance department.
To facilitate this whole process, there are maintenance management software solutions or CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System). The use of these systems is an added value for management, since it simplifies all these processes, centralising all the information and facilitating communication between managers and maintenance technicians.
Maintenance software enables you to respond to the main objectives of maintenance management, which include scheduling work efficiently and controlling costs and resources to ensure the quality of the company’s products and services.
It is erroneous to still believe that we can eliminate preventive maintenance from the maintenance strategy of companies. Although the focus is on prevention, there are several day-to-day situations in which we will still need to resort to corrective maintenance. But, after all, what is it all about?
Corrective maintenance refers to the set of technical tasks for the purpose of correcting faults with assets and equipment, whenever the need to repair or even replace them arises. It is one of the most widely used types of maintenance in asset management, which seeks to correct errors to restore assets to their desired state of operation.
Corrective maintenance operations are mostly unexpected, and it is therefore normal for some difficulties to arise in their execution, such as, for example, the lack of stock of replacement parts to carry them out.
However, despite being unavoidable, this type of maintenance has a major financial impact for companies, as it results in the prolonged unavailability of assets that can, for example, stop an entire production line. Moreover, a significant percentage of these equipment failures can be easily avoided with preventive maintenance strategies.
For example, when a technician repairs an HVAC system, it is a corrective maintenance operation. However, if the technician is carrying out a routine inspection and detects that the HVAC filters are partially clogged and submits a maintenance request to have them replaced soon, this is a preventive maintenance request. Thus, we realize that many requests for corrective maintenance arise during preventive maintenance operations.
As we explained above, most of the time, corrective maintenance needs arise during the performance of routine work. For example, while inspecting a machine, the technician identifies a fault that could compromise its operation. This problem will give rise to a maintenance request, which will subsequently be a corrective maintenance task, where the technician will repair or replace the equipment as required.
Corrective maintenance can be applied to a range of equipment, systems and processes. Below are some examples:
During an emergency HVAC repair, the technician notices that the filters are partially clogged. In this case, a corrective maintenance request is generated to clean or replace filters soon in order to improve equipment efficiency.
When performing a preventive maintenance operation on a machine on the production line, the technician comes across a significantly worn part. Here, there is naturally a need to react and schedule a corrective maintenance work order for the purpose of repairing or replacing the part in question.
The technician is carrying out routine repairs on the road and notices some damage to road signs as a result of the weather conditions. Here again we are dealing with a situation that may generate a corrective maintenance work order to replace this signage at a later date.
For example, when a technician repairs an HVAC system, it is a corrective maintenance operation. However, if the technician is carrying out a routine inspection and detects that the HVAC filters are partially clogged and submits a maintenance request to have them replaced soon, this is a preventive maintenance request. Thus, we realize that many requests for corrective maintenance arise during preventive maintenance operations.
How can you identify the need for corrective maintenance of assets?
As we explained above, most of the time, corrective maintenance needs arise during the performance of routine work. For example, while inspecting a machine, the technician identifies a fault that could compromise its operation. This problem will give rise to a maintenance request, which will subsequently be a corrective maintenance task, where the technician will repair or replace the equipment as required.
Examples of corrective maintenance
Corrective maintenance can be applied to a range of equipment, systems and processes. Below are some examples:
HVAC systems
During an emergency HVAC repair, the technician notices that the filters are partially clogged. In this case, a corrective maintenance request is generated to clean or replace filters soon in order to improve equipment efficiency.
Production line
When performing a preventive maintenance operation on a machine on the production line, the technician comes across a significantly worn part. Here, there is naturally a need to react and schedule a corrective maintenance work order for the purpose of repairing or replacing the part in question.
Public works
The technician is carrying out routine repairs on the road and notices some damage to road signs as a result of the weather conditions. Here again we are dealing with a situation that may generate a corrective maintenance work order to replace this signage at a later date.
Nowadays, companies try their best to reduce the percentage of corrective maintenance and try to be more proactive and less reactive. While in some situations it makes sense to simply repair a fault only when it occurs, in other cases, it is better to prevent problems than to repair them.
Below are some ways to reduce corrective maintenance in your company’s asset management:
By implementing a maintenance management system (CMMS) solution in your company, you will have access to reports on the operations that can help you make better decisions and prioritise the most critical work orders to maximise production.
There is no point investing in technology if your company’s employees do not know how to use it and take advantage of its use. In addition, you should ensure that your team is technically prepared to recognise potential signs of failure and understands the reports while carrying out other maintenance tasks.
With the support of CMMS software, you can prioritise the most important tasks, as well as schedule technical interventions in an agile and effective manner. For example, you can easily group together all the corrective maintenance tasks for a particular installation and thus reduce time lost in travel.
By acquiring maintenance software, you can ensure that all work performed, faults and other relevant information related to the equipment are recorded in the system and available for consultation. In this way, technicians can detect patterns and record problems that have recurred several times despite the work that has been carried out.
Given that the aim of corrective maintenance is to repair an asset so that it is fully functional again, it will never be possible to eliminate this type of maintenance completely.
Both corrective and preventive maintenance are important types of maintenance for any company’s maintenance strategy. However, it is critical to understand when corrective maintenance is beneficial and when it can lead to downtime and other productivity losses. While preventive maintenance helps identify potential equipment failures before they occur, corrective maintenance resolves both small faults and major breakdowns.
We conclude, therefore, that corrective maintenance will always be present and that it should be applied mainly to equipment with a low level of criticality, thus if it has failures, they do not interfere with the company’s productivity.
Get an integrated management of the maintenance of your equipment and benefit from an app that allows you to be more agile and access, in real time, all maintenance requests and the status of your company’s corrective maintenance operations.
Give a new dynamic to your maintenance department with an intelligent CMMS software. Valuekeep was designed to optimize the maintenance processes of companies of any size and activity sector, which value efficiency, speed and flexibility.
For a company to run efficiently and profitably, it is necessary to ensure that all equipment is running at 100%. And for this, preventive maintenance plans are fundamental. Without a predefined plan, it is easy to forget important tasks and spend money on superfluous solutions that could be avoided.
Preventive maintenance refers to regular and periodic maintenance performed on physical assets to reduce the risk of failure and unplanned downtime of equipment. Such events can be quite costly for companies.
This type of maintenance is only effective when planned and scheduled based on data provided in real time, something that is only possible with the support of a digital maintenance management tool.
This type of maintenance strategy is one of the most used and is located between corrective maintenance and predictive maintenance.
If your company has not yet adopted a preventive maintenance strategy, it continues to act only reactively, which translates into unnecessary maintenance expenses and increases the unplanned downtime of your company’s assets.
Before you start drafting a preventive maintenance plan, establish the results you want to achieve by implementing the plan in your company, such as reducing reactive maintenance-related costs by 25% by the end of the year.
The preventive maintenance plan consists of a document created by the maintenance manager, which contains an inventory of the equipment and the periods in which they should be checked throughout the year (weekly, monthly, quarterly, semiannually, annually). In this listing, the assets are divided by equipment families.
In addition, the maintenance plan presents a list of tasks associated with each of the equipment and the period in which they should be carried out, as well as the resources needed to complete each job, which brings benefits such as saving resources, increasing productivity and equipment profitability.
The main goal of the preventive maintenance plan is to ensure that all listed equipment is properly overhauled in order to keep its productivity at its maximum.
At the end of each year, the plan should be analyzed by the maintenance manager so that the following year’s plan is based on the performance and tasks associated with each piece of equipment, in order to define the needs for the following year.
In summary, a preventive maintenance plan should include: a list of assets and equipment, standard operating procedures, safety procedures, and the estimated time to complete the preventive tasks.
Preventive maintenance operations are essential for the proper functioning of companies’ assets and facilities, as they increase the life span of equipment and reduce the need to invest in new assets.
With the support of maintenance management software such as Valuekeep, you can create preventive maintenance plans and obtain an overview of all the operations scheduled for your assets and facilities, to ensure that they are carried out at the defined periodicity.
Valuekeep CMMS software was developed to allow greater agility and speed in the management of maintenance. Maintenance managers receive push notifications or by e-mail about operations, can access the maintenance history of each asset and visualize tasks in calendar view, which allows them to simplify processes and increase the productivity of their maintenance teams.