Following up from the first in this series, Maximizing ROI from CMMS: Contractors, this month we’ll be digging into ways in which good CMMS software solutions, like QFM, can help you save money and extend the life of your assets.
Accurate data for accurate planning
Asset registers can be set up to capture a wealth of information, from the basics like make and model, to anything else such as color and network ID. The volume of data that you could collect is vast, but the time available to keep this data accurate is not. We recommend formulating a strategy about what data is important to your site; potentially just a dozen or so fields that you can commit to keep up to date. It’s important to consider naming conventions as this will save a lot of time down the line (and time is, after all, money). For example, are you using the term toilet, loo, or WC? Ensuring standardization on one term will make it easier to filter and report on assets. An asset ID can also be a meaningful code, allowing them to be better understood on work orders, in reports, and outside of the software at a glance. Fire doors in a hospital could be prefixed FDR, then followed by AAW for acute admissions ward, followed by a unique number string. This also makes it simpler to add assets in the future, helping keep the register up-to-date.
Which assets are costing the most
Once all assets are loaded on the CMMS system, the fun can start and the savings can begin. Details of any maintenance can now be saved against each asset, including time spent on each job, cost of parts and contractor costs, if applicable, enabling FMs to report on upkeep costs for each asset. Then, comparing this to purchase price and lifespan, FMs can compare their asset types and see which last longest, or are cheapest to run.
Armed with the knowledge that their Toshiba air con units are more cost effective than their Mitsubishi counterparts, for example, FMs could start to standardize their assets as they fail or choose which assets to use to fit out a refurb or new build. This is not only beneficial in terms of getting value over an asset’s lifecycle, or even being able to negotiate better prices through bulk purchasing; maintenance and troubleshooting will be easier due to the team’s familiarity with the model, and parts will be easier to manage. Fewer products to buy, store and manage means less time and money is spent on procurement and warehousing.
And if a few years down there line, there’s the feeling that the asset chosen is no longer the best option, a new model can be introduced and benchmarked against the others to compare performance.
Understanding alternatives to replacement
Before end-of-life measures need to be taken, there’s a lot that can be done to sweat the assets, maximising their value over their lifetime. Conducting failure analysis using CMMS software provides invaluable insight into this.
Reports can be set up to show the problem type reported for each asset (such as leaking, no power, or overheating) and cross referenced against asset type or location to understand if there’s a problem inherent with a particular asset model. If the problem is seen across the same asset model, preventative maintenance could be conducted across all assets (or even on a proportion as a test) to proactively prevent future failures.
If the problem identified is related to location, for example the chiller in a plant room is overheating due to the size of room or the volume of assets within, different precautions could be actioned. Installing an extraction system to lower the temperature is much cheaper that replacing assets, and the success of such actions can be monitored though CMMS reports going forward. Reporting could also identify if the problem is security related, such a vandalism, in which case the action would be around protection, lighting or monitoring.
Reducing the admin
A useful feature in CMMS software is categorizing assets into groups, which allows a parent-child relationship between the assets in the group.
Creating a group of the same asset type, such as all the fire doors in the building or all the assets on the first floor, has many benefits. Assigning a PPM against the parent asset of the group will generate a work schedule including all the assets in the group, making it easier to ensure work is completed across each asset and improving compliance.
Parent and child tags are valuable to reduce disruption. An air handling unit could be classified as a parent, and pipes and pumps the children. This allows the engineer to understand the relationship between different assets within systems, and when it comes to replacing an asset it is much clearer to see dependencies, such as pipe width, ensuring the best replacement is procured.
Predictive maintenance
Planned preventive maintenance is often cheaper than reactive maintenance, reducing cost and disruption caused by failures. However with the more widespread availability of sensors, both built into newer assets and as standalone purchases, FM is making the move towards predictive maintenance, or data-driven maintenance.
Sensor readings are taken from each asset and work is generated when performance dips or anomalies are identified. This prevents the problem of over-maintaining an asset, which wastes resources if unnecessary, and can shorten the life of the asset.
Predictive maintenance can be used as a segment of a wider asset management plan. For example, an organisation could decide to implement a run-to-fail policy on non-essential assets with short life or assets with prohibitive designs / no available parts; PPM schedules on others and predictive maintenance on the most critical assets. In this way, FMs can create the most efficient data-driven asset management strategy for their own organization with reporting provided by the CMMS system.
For more information about how QFM can save you money across your asset management strategy, contact us for a chat or a demonstration.
