Whatever your industry, whatever your company culture or size what separates ‘spend’ from ‘investment’ is the expectation an investment will bring a return. When you decide to invest, whether from your annual budget or making a CapEx request you can be sure there will be a justification process, be that to yourself or the board. This is a conversation the team at Ashcom Technologies are often party to, you see when purchasing software like a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) that expectation is no different, in fact, it is often heightened.
The idea that a CMMS will have a significant and positive impact on your maintenance operations is not challenging to illustrate, the software will transform your maintenance function, allowing you to take control of all your assets – your equipment, your team, and your data. However, we are often asked just how can that impact be measured, or what will the ROI be. This is the justification process I mentioned previously. Whatever that question is it is quickly followed with ‘my boss will want to know.’
An often-quoted study conducted some time ago by Jones Lang LaSalle suggested that preventative maintenance could achieve an ROI of 545%. This exercise considered the cost of replacing equipment – in this instance particularly expensive equipment, the impact preventative maintenance had on equipment life expectancy and the impact on energy consumption, amongst other factors. Again, it is not challenging to appreciate if you maintain equipment, in a proactive manner you increase the likelihood of it working better and more efficiently, for longer. Therefore, pushing that date you need to replace said equipment further and further into the future. And, there you go, all the factors you need for an impressive ROI.
Every provider of maintenance management software will have an ROI calculator, why, we even have one. The truth of the matter is, however, how much you save and the speed of return depends on many variables - The software you choose, the level of investment, how you purchase it, how well it is implemented and the list goes on and on. Add in the specifics of your own business and it is easy to see why this process becomes so complicated and any result could easily become misleading.
Key Performance Indicators
So how can you reliably measure the impact of implementing maintenance management software at your business? Which key performance indicators can you can use to gauge the success of your chosen solution? How can you measure the positive impact it has on shaping maintenance operations? Whilst the most revealing will inevitably vary from organization to organization, there are some indicators that are applicable to most maintenance teams. Here they are:
Choosing the right maintenance management software will supercharge your maintenance team’s productivity by introducing Workflow Improvements. If you can schedule preventive maintenance tasks in a CMMS, your work order process will be more organized, you’ll get more done and you will get it done faster. The right system will create team accountability by allowing you to measure scheduled, completed, and overdue work orders at the press of a button. Improving your team’s efficiency and workflow in a measurable way.
How much time did you really spend completing a task, compared to the time you estimated? Maintenance management software makes Estimated V Actual Time - a key performance indicator easy to measure. It will also provide the specific data you need to help you make informed decisions, which in turn will facilitate future efficiencies, allow your team to work smarter, and improve outcomes.
As your preventive maintenance activities increase, by default your reactive maintenance workload will decrease, leading to quantifiable cost savings. Unexpected Maintenance Costs – as a result of breakdowns may not be budgeted for, and production may need to cease whilst repairs are undertaken meaning your team is working under pressure. Production stopping or being slowed may also damage both your company reputation and your profits.
A widely used method for measuring the output of equipment is Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). A CMMS will provide meaningful data on repair times for individual assets, one of the key variables involved in calculating your OEE. Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) and Mean Time Between Failure) MTBF can also be determined quickly by a CMMS and contribute to assessing OEE.
Quantitative and Qualitative benefits
Whilst some benefits of deploying a CMMS are easy to measure, others are less so. Both the more obvious or quantitative and less tangible – let’s call them qualitative can both add value by providing the insight you need to establish whether your chosen software is having the expected impact. So just what are these mystery benefits?
Your CMMS will facilitate improved decision making. The ability to record and analyse data, and then draw conclusions from it, is much easier to do with all the necessary information at your fingertips. The ultimate pay-out is that you are making decisions based on facts, not feelings and this will result in better outcomes. Not only that you’ll be able to prioritize maintenance jobs more efficiently, allocate labour hours more effectively, order spare parts in advance.
A computerized maintenance management system leads to improved communication not just within your maintenance team but across the company. Why? You and your colleagues will be able to check the status of jobs, assign and close work orders, automatically adjust inventory numbers and raise PO’s, all without leaving your desk. Information will pass freely throughout your maintenance team and beyond at speed. You can also present critical and pertinent data, in a user-friendly way to stakeholders throughout your business at will.
Another metric that may seem difficult to measure is extended asset lifecycles. It can, however, take years to collect enough data to draw meaningful conclusions. Assets can last for many years, even decades, so a true comparison of asset life before and after deploying your CMMS could take an entire career to measure. However, logic says you will reap the rewards of your assets lasting longer in the immediate future by implementing a regimented preventative maintenance schedule.
Perhaps, the most important intangible result you will see from using a CMMS is the raised visibility of your maintenance team positioning them as an asset and critical to the ongoing function of your organization, rather than simply a cost. In fact, the right CMMS may change the way your business thinks about maintenance altogether.
The manufacturing sector is coming under increasing pressure to become more sustainable. From simple benefits like reducing paper usage, your CMMS can drive your need to reduce the impact of your business on the environment. Through energy efficiency measures, limiting scrap and shrinking your inventory will enable your business to do more with less, which makes both sound environmental and commercial sense.
A happy maintenance team is a productive maintenance team. Your chosen software should improve employee well-being, by reducing stress through the presentation of a manageable workload in an organised and logical manner. Less stress means a stable team and reduced employee turnover resulting in reduced onboarding and recruitment costs.
The key areas of impact resulting from deploying maintenance management software will depend on the stakeholder. There is no blanket response to the question ‘has it worked?’ because what may be important to one team within your business may be less significant to another. Your line manager's opinion may be simple. Are they still hearing about problems a CMMS was supposed to solve? If they are hearing about them less or not at all, they may consider the deployment to be a success. Your finance team will want to see it has had a positive effect on controlling spend and getting to grips with your inventory. Perhaps ultimately, if your maintenance team is more productive because of your chosen CMMS you can consider its implementation to be successful. Another truth is that whilst there are fast wins – the benefits will of course increase over time as the software beds in and as users get to grips with the technology at their fingertips.
One final important way to assess the impact of your CMMS is through reporting – it is also a whole new blog post! However, in short, the right CMMS will allow you to correlate all and any data to find the comparisons and numbers you’re looking for. CMMS systems have standard reports available on work order completion, mean time between asset failures, estimated versus actual labour hours, inventory counts, and purchasing information, the ability to create your own takes reporting to another level.
If you are investigating introducing maintenance management software at your business or are concerned what you have in place is not delivering, why not give the team at Ashcom Technologies a call? We would be delighted to hear from you, develop a thorough understanding of your needs and deliver a solution that will integrate into business seamlessly and efficiently generating maximum impact and ROI in the minimum amount of time.