Spreadsheets have been a primary tool for the different management of business processes both in execution and monitoring, within these processes we can find the maintenance area, which is a critical process for the responsibilities it carries to ensure different environments such as the operation of assets, meeting production goals, providing a service within the standards expected by customers, among others, making maintenance a key part of the value chain offered to the target market, The provision of a service within the standards expected by customers, among others, making maintenance a key part of the value chain offered to the target market and it is for this reason that maintenance management should be included, measured and improved within the strategic plan of organizations, directly related to the areas responsible for generating the economic results of a company.
Macros made with spreadsheets were widely used in maintenance at the end of the nineties and first decade of the two thousand in all types of organizations, as an excellent computer solution to the requirements of the market, the strategic and organizational style of the companies of that time, to obtain good results these always had to be accompanied by hundreds or thousands of hard copies of paper, photographs and physical folders used in the form of formats in word processors, These became the support for what was done inside the spreadsheets and grew over time in direct proportion to the growth in number of assets, number of customers, revenues and operational quality requirements increasingly demanded by end users, making it more and more difficult to store them, both for space and for the possibility of making a real and efficient follow-up of the different situations that arise every day in the tasks, especially preventive maintenance.
It is becoming more and more difficult to store them, both in terms of space and in terms of the possibility of following up in a real and efficient way the different situations that arise every day, especially in preventive maintenance tasks.
All maintenance management is manual in spreadsheets
Although apparently the spreadsheet, as you want to see, is a kind of automation of maintenance management, it really is not, what it is, is a very good way to store data especially numerical and bring them to totalizable and graphical results, the data are easy to find, filter, process, analyze and many more features of this type of software, for the process to be complete between quotes, the macro requires other supports such as filling out the work order forms in word processors, manually, the user must define multiple information in these, such as a tracking number given by your macro, names of those responsible for the task without knowing if they are busy in other tasks or not, look for which type of maintenance process flow applies to the work order, change it, modify it or create a new one if required, check if there are spare parts and consumables either in the macro without knowing if it is updated or not, or go to the warehouse to ask for their availability, if there is not, do the whole supply process outside the macro environment, Additionally, you must assign the tools without knowing if they are available or not, if they were lost or if they have to be removed because they no longer have their full functionality, after all the time spent to define the work order format, it is printed, delivered to the maintenance technician or sent to your email.
The technician takes the form and can take two paths for its execution, in one he prints it and begins to perform the work, diligence by hand, writes all the activities performed on the asset, the work is done in a time that may or may not be real, but completes the work for any reason, the form leaves it in the folder of the asset and begins to perform another preventive maintenance work, In the second way, the technician can take the laptop to the workplace, in an environment or place of difficult access, fills out the form, inserts the necessary photographs into the document and finally converts it into pdf, The mail is not known when it will be read due to the many mails that arrive from work orders, if additional work has to be done on the asset will be postponed until when they meet and discuss the tasks required to start work again, all this documentation is usually managed in several ways in various sources either in email, opening folders in the file manager, printing the completed forms and placing them in AZ type folders, making changes in the macro to update the information, all these processes require a lot of administrative time that could be used in quality operational time, which would allow to give order and control to the maintenance management.
Corrective maintenance management is difficult in spreadsheets
When unscheduled shutdowns appear in assets that require immediate repair or corrective maintenance, it is difficult to control, follow up and correct the failure status by using spreadsheets, the history of the asset must be consulted manually, searching either in physical folders or in the information stored in the computer all the maintenance reports, read each one of them until you find the past failures of the asset to perform the respective analysis to find if there are failures by design, installation, operating conditions, poor quality of inputs or spare parts or other reasons, then you must find the dossier of the equipment and review manuals, procedures and others that have been defined or recommended by the manufacturer so that after many analyses you can find the source of the failure.
The corrective maintenances are very frequent and to make its follow-up by means of spreadsheets becomes a very wasteful process, so much that the area becomes a fire extinguishing environment, since the macros do not have the capacity to automate the measurement processes, The MTBF measurement requires availability times and in macros it can be done in a not very precise and somewhat complicated way, the same situation, a little less complex, happens with the MTTR, both indicators allow to calculate the reliability of the asset but real indicators would not be obtained so that accurate decisions focused on availability and cost reduction can be taken.
Productivity and team communication is most important
The processing, analysis and management of information is becoming increasingly complex due to the growing and large amount of information available from various dispersed sources and the difficulty to follow up, which hampers planning, coordination, availability of resources and therefore the costs of the area, due to the lack of ability to make timely decisions based on accurate data, low visualization of the work, low efficiency in management, no ability to update in real time the maintenance management.
The maintenance area is managed as a collaborative process of constant communication, in which all the time information is being exchanged between team members, work order assignments must be automated in real time, changes in programming must be easily and immediately provided, the technical workload must be known to avoid burn-out or oversizing of the head count, inspection events must be communicated under a single premise and in real time and all maintenance management activities must be well executed within the working time, achieving a good working environment of constant communication, these features are far from being achieved by even the most structured spreadsheet macro, these required capabilities cannot and will not be achieved by this type of software.
Another factor in the communication of the area is mobility, technicians have to move within various parts of the plant, maintenance shop or difficult to access or externally to nearby or remote locations where they have their assets to serve customers or maintain the equipment that the customer has put in their care, for this type of work is infallible the use of smartphones or tablets with or without internet to perform easily and efficiently the work, communicate in time the events found in the assets in order to provide an expected service and thus differentiate themselves from the competition, the functionality of spreadsheets on smartphones or tablets is not very visible, complicated and difficult to handle data due to its interface, the software is not made for these features and in some ways for these jobs does not apply its use.
What is a CMMS?
A CMMS (acronym for Computerized Maintenance Management System) is a computerized maintenance management software that allows organizations to be productive, efficient and strategic when managing their maintenance in a controlled and organized way, allowing them to manage time efficiently and effectively so that maintenance teams work in a coordinated and well-planned way with an effective and available use of resources in inventory and in turn that area leaders have a complete view of their management through a single interface, measuring indicators that show the degree of learning and compliance with the goals.
The technical staff will be able to receive real-time notifications via mobile application, WhatsApp and email of preventive or corrective maintenance work orders, fill out work orders easily and dynamically and prepare customized reports with good information content, making their work in maintenance much more professional.
Is CMMShere the Solution to Maintenance Management in Excel Sheets?
Yes, CMMShere is the new way to manage maintenance in organizations of various productive sectors, easily scalable from having a user with a single asset to more than 100 users and more than 1000 assets, the software has the most modern capabilities and applications in the industry, being the product with greater customization of the market and with the adjustable cost to the size of any organization, has the full potential to manage maintenance in real time, with access to any type of information at any time, making agile consultation of histories and failure analysis.
CMMSHere is mobile with OFFLINE and ONLINE capabilities, has the latest in predictive maintenance monitoring technology supported by communication and IoT (Internet Of Things) equipment of Industry 4.0, which allows constant control of operational condition variables of those assets classified as critical.
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