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Webinar Transcription
My name is Marty De Los Santos. I am an Account Manager here with MicroMain. We’ll be going through some specific slides about maintenance management, CMMS systems in related to the manufacturing environment. Toward the end, we’ll also dive into the actual product itself. We’ll walk through some few screens, work orders and show how PMs are set up in MicroMain as well.
A little bit about who we are. We are MicroMain. We are headquartered in Austin, Texas, which is where I am located as well. We have been around since 1991 providing software related to maintenance management, facility management. Currently, we have customers not only here in the United States but in Canada and also around the world as well, where English is primarily spoken. About 3,700 customers are currently utilizing MicroMain tools. Just an example, a few of the logos that maybe recognizable to some of you folks out there.
As it relates to using of CMMS as it relates to manufacturing, there are some obvious items that do come to mind. Of course, you want to meet production goals. That’s always going to be very key in an environment. Meet plant specific needs, maximize equipment availability, extend equipment life, project budgets accurately, organize data and operations, generate needed reports and of course making well-informed decisions. What we are going to be talking about today, “How can a CMMS help you to accomplish these items?”
How do you keep equipment working? Preventive Maintenance is of course one of the number one answers you’ll hear as to make sure that, “Hey our equipment is up and running. It’s being maintained on the scheduled basis” or whatever the manufacturer requires of that piece of equipment. A couple of things with MicroMain is when you are setting up your PMs, you do have some options as to how do these PMs get out to your technicians. We will be talking about mobile during today as well. But of course, PMs as most of you know, is how to get these items scheduled. Is it something that’s related to a frequency such as daily, weekly, monthly, yearly or quarterly, or is it tied to some meter that you’re monitoring for that piece of equipment? Whatever that meter could be, is it hours? Is it miles? Is it cycles? You could determine your own unit of measurements and keep track of that information and micromanage whenever that trigger point is set up or item is triggered, for example, the system will automatically create that PM. So of course, you’re also going to be tracking your KPIs through reports by adding elements such as inspections to your PMs or maybe it’s a reminder of just to do inspections.
I do talk to several folks that, “Hey, we have certain PMs that we perform but we also want to schedule our weekly or bi-weekly or monthly inspections that we perform our machinery. We are not doing anything we just want the technicians to go and examine a few items and either get some taps or know it failed. Okay, if it’s fails what do we do from there”. As you know doing all those items will help to reduce your downtime with your production related equipment.
Scheduling. CMMS do and of course MicroMain CMMS does provide an easy way to get your PMs scheduled and to set up and track those items. They can be based on time daily, weekly, monthly or by meter as mentioned before. And you can create your own unit of measure. It would be hours, miles, cycles or some other unit of measure that you’re tracking and maintaining related to a piece of equipment. The idea from a preventive maintenance stand point is, “What are we going to do?” Define your plan and the plan may already be predefined based on the purchase and installation of that certain piece of equipment from the manufacturers. They may have certain recommendations that you’ll follow. So now how do we get those scheduled and that once they are scheduled let’s execute them. Let’s get this PM work orders out to our technicians that are performing the work. Management always needs to be able to report on . . . One reports on what was done.
What was cost of what was done? How long is it taking to get those done? How often is this occurring? There maybe certain audits that you also are tied to that are . . . Folks that are coming in and want to know that yes, your manufacturing plant is following these guidelines. Not just your manufacture guidelines but hey we have certain guidelines based on the industry we are in that our customers want to know that we’re following a certain PM schedule related to the equipment that’s making their products. Using all that learning from what we are doing, do we need to change the frequency by which we are maintaining our equipment? If between PMs you find that you having more unscheduled maintenance that’s happening to certain pieces of equipment but you’re really not a point where it’s time to replace that piece of equipment. Maybe we need to shorten that PM time frame rather than monthly maybe we need to do early three weeks for example. Information that’s going to be available for you in the CMMS solution from work that’s being done, reports that are being done, again, where you can make those changes to your PM schedule.
What happens when equipment is down? Work orders which are created when equipment is down. We’re just talking about those unscheduled items. In a manufacturing environment, some of that information might be able to become through what we call a work request feature or web request feature. I know with MicroMain, we do have an add-on module that allows for employees outside of your maintenance team to be able to submit a ticket, a work request ticket. In a manufacturing plant, that may not always be the case. With folks that are working round the production line may not have a PC or laptop readily available to them but they need the ability to still let you know when something’s affecting the product . . . Affecting your production line but we do run across some folks that say, “Hey every piece of machinery there is a laptop or there is a PC. Those technicians can be able to . . . Can use or work request piece, submit a ticket and then what it’s designed to do, it’s designed to really eliminate no e-mailing or phone calls or somebody passing somebody down the hallway saying, “Hey we notice an issue please fix this”.
Those elements really don’t create a tracking true mechanism when it comes a request. Using the tool like our work request feature does create a work request or a ticket in requested status. There is e-mail notification as well that is created from that. If I submit a request, there are recipients on the other end that are being notified that a new request has been submitted and maybe you know is this always happening on the production line? We have some customers who, their maintenance teams are not only managing production, but they’re managing the facility as well. So it could be somebody offers [SP] administrative level folks that always likes sending things over even as common as, “Hey it’s hot in here at the office can you please check the HVAC unit?” Those items could do create a tracking mechanism. So it’s a ticket, it’s in application, it’s being monitored, you can see if it’s been accomplished or if it’s past due. Was it placed on hold because you are waiting for parts? And if the requester does receive e-mail when the work is done, an e-mail notification can be sent back to them letting them know that, “Hey what you submitted has been accomplished”.
Mobile is a big item that we’ve seen a lot of our customers migrate to. And it’s more common today with technology that we have today. MicroMain does offer a mobile for web solution as well plus it’s available won any kind of device that is web enabled, be it a smart phone, a tablet or even from a PC or laptop. So it’s not an app that you are going to go out to an app store like apple store or android or some other micro models store. It’s going to be a URL that you can utilize to log in to the mobile functionality. The big plus of it is that if your technicians are utilizing a tablet or a phone, they can receive those work order requests as well on the phone. It’s again it’s requested work order that, depending on their rights, they know if they’re allowed to see all work orders. They can see those new work orders as they come in. They can also see their PMs as they are being generated based on those trigger elements.
If they are assigned to that technician, there’s information that’s right there on their device that lets him know, “Hey, is this work order assigned and is it assigned to me?” Other things with that as well with mobile, you can not only manage all your work orders, you can even start a new work order. Maybe I am walking around the plant I see an issue, if utilizing bar codes for whatever reason from my mobile device, I can stand that bar code, pull up that asset, see if there’s any open work orders that are addressing the problem that I am looking at. If not, I can create a new work order from there. Upgrade my label add parts and if there are any inspection points that are on a work order I can manage those there. I can update meter readings as well. Do I need to add any kind of documents to it? Do I want to take a before and after picture and associate that with the work order? I can do all that with the mobile piece from MicroMain as well.
As you most of you guys know work orders, what’s included in a work order we are looking at part, we are looking at labor. Are there inspection points? Inspection points are usually more often on the scheduled item. Are we adding documents? What assets are we working on? Keeping track of all that information and as much implied you can do all those items in addition to with the mobile functionality as well.
How do you prepare to minimize downtime looking into inventory? We do hear from time-to-time some customers say, “When an item goes down, we realize we don’t always have that part in-house to be able to keep that piece of equipment up and running”. We really don’t have a very good inventory control system in place. With MicroMain, we can help you manage your inventory. You can define minimum inventory levels. We do have an inventory add-on module where you can utilize pocket PCs to keep track of your inventory. Even without that, even with just the main application or with mobile, you can see what parts are available. What parts do you have on hand because this part is a production specific part. Do we want to keep five of them on hand or ten of them. Whatever that number might be and set up a minimum a low reminder that let’s us know, “Hey has this part fallen below its minimum inventory levels that we need to find?” We never want to fall below ten and we have just fallen below ten. So now we are getting an alert that let’s me know, “Hey you have got to re-order this part”. You do not ever want to have an item on hold, production line on hold because you’re waiting for a part.
Asset tracking. Staying on track with your transaction logs and other reports. One thing with MicroMain, there is really a full audit trail related to our parts inventory. It’s going to keep track of everything you’re doing with those parts, whether you’re ordering parts, issuing parts, your work order to technicians, moving parts between inventory locations. Maybe in your environment, you have four or five different inventory locations throughout your facility, and you want to be able to move parts between each. Again, as mentioned, your order parts, receiving parts, a full audit is going to keep track of all those items and on which assets are utilizing those parts.
You can also create your own numerical ratings that allows you to access and record the condition more than one of your assets physical property. This is where inspection points come into play. You can define certain steps of the case in all conditions per asset that are unique to each of those assets that you can also utilize for inspections. Talking about your KPIs be able to report against that information as well. Be able to capture asset data on location and on why you should think that data with maintenance database.
Just as an example, we do have a good customer industry related to the HVAC. Before the MicroMain, they really like much the necessary information to make informed decisions. Again, coming from a manual environment of keeping track of their machinery, a lot of these folks may already have systems in place. We do talk to a fair number of folks who still have a manual system in place. Be it binders, Excel that’s being kept manually, even some now will say, “Oh yeah, where’s everything stored?” It’s stored in the previous maintenance supervisors head is what’s occurred. This is very similar of what this company is coming from.
They got on board with MicroMain and started to utilize the MicroMain to incorporate new practices. They realized that they were able to reduce over our maintenance cost by 52%, equipment, over time, was down by 48%. Most of the work started being completed with 42% less man power. Huge, huge numbers for this particular organization, not necessarily standard that will work, that it will look like for you and your own environment. This is just one example, again, where they are able to measure what was happening prior to getting on board with the CMMS solution. After doing so they had measurable items that look at to say, “Hey you know this is what it used to take us now this is what it’s taking us. We’ve reduced our cost, our labor cost added to your overtime as a huge cost being able to use less power, and I imagine they are also been able to reduce equipment downtime as well.
The benefit of CMMS, maintaining asset history and information. Be able to quickly go back and say, “What have we done to a piece of equipment? How often has it occurred? Are we happy to maintain it in between PMs more frequently than maybe other similar assets.” All that’s readily available to you with the assets within the MicroMain. Provides more equipment uptime. Again, you’re getting your PMs scheduled. You have all the information available to you whether it’s PM work, inspection work that’s occurring, what kind of information and data is going to help you to determine do we need to alter our PM schedule or do we need to maybe make some changes about how we maintain it? Do we need to add certain activities that maybe will not doing to help the equipment uptime. Save money by reducing maintenance costs and downtime and increasing labor efficiency.
Those were again . . . You had the information available to you if you have multiple technicians all performing similar work , is it all pretty uniform across the board, it is taking everybody about an hour to do the same thing? Or is somebody taking longer an hour and half to two hours or somebody taking less time 30 minutes. If the person who is taking less time really doing all the work? Is the person taking too much time is it a matter of . . . Was there an issue as to why it’s taking them longer? Could that be the training item for, “Hey maybe we need to have some training for our technicians to get them all on the same page as to, hey this job should only take an hour to get done”. If you’re doing it in 30 minutes and you’re not completing all the steps, if it’s taking too long, why is that?
Improve your asset life span. Everybody wants to make sure you’re getting the most out of your equipment, and that’s also something you can track in MicroMain as well. When did you buy the piece of equipment? When did you install it? Based on the manufacturer’s recommendations what is the expected useful life? And because of that when should we consider replacing that piece of equipment? There is for the folks that manage elsewhere have a purchasing within your organization there’s reports specific to asset replacement projection that you can utilize to know, “Hey what kind of capital expenditures do we have coming up?”
I do talk to some folks and say, “You know, we would like to run this two or three years out so that we are not just blind sighted immediately with understanding hey this year we have $200,000 in capital expenditures or whatever that piece of equipment may cost, let’s run this for 2017 or 2016 and look at that information there. “Does it mean you have to buy something” No, if we’re maintaining it and partner inspections are realizing, “We’ve been able to increase lifespan because of our PMs”. Managing your parts and inventory, managing your labor, doing all that with the MicroMain and also from your mobile improve utility consumption and reduce downtime. Downtime is a big item, how do we make sure our machinery is up and running and not affecting production?
Before we get to questions, I am actually going to get into the application itself. Give me one second. I will be seeing in my screen MicroMain maintenance premium, opened up to my dashboard. One thing with MicroMain with each user logs in, they can define what is their landing page. When I log in, my landing page is my dashboard. I can see what’s . . . What’s new in the current version that I am on. I have got some links from the left to right that I can define. These are links to various pages throughout the application. Each user can determine what pages do they want to land on when they . . . What links do they want to utilize on the dashboard over the right some information, could be about work orders, active work orders, what kind of information are we looking at. Completed work orders.
Let’s take a look at a couple of things. We are going to first look at your schedule of maintenance because that’s especially in an environment like yours, you want to make sure you have schedule of maintenance going on with your different pieces of equipment. Those are managed under Tasks in MicroMain. I nipped that from here, I am under the Actions Tab task. I also happen to have it as a quick link on my dashboard. The first step, of course, is we need to define things that we want done. What are we doing, is it actual preventive maintenance or is it just a reminder to do other things like inspections or time to recalibrate something? Is it something even as simple as do we need to recharge all of our fire extinguishers, is it time to do that.
You can utilize the task feature in MicroMain to set up any of these reminder items that you want to accomplish. For example, let’s just pick an item here. I am just going to use this one here because I know we have got some data I can utilize it for. Understanding [inaudible 00:19:02] not so much really your production line piece of equipment, but just to show you how the system works in MicroMain, give the task a name. What are we doing? What kind of work order is this going to be called? This is your own user definable list. How often are we going to do it? Is there a priority level you want to assign? About how long should this typically take?
Down below, I have some assignment options I can utilize. Is it a locked out tagged out item? Is it safe PMs, or do we need to make sure we save the item or shut down an item related with this PM. We have our different frequency options including meters as mentioned before. And with meter, it can be . . . do we do this only every one thousand hour s or is it one thousand hours or every four weeks? You can use a meter element combination with the time element and whichever one triggers first, will trigger this particular PM.
Of course, if it’s something that’s done quarterly, select the monthly option to say, hey, this happens every three months versus every one month. Scheduling dates when was the last time scheduled? Does it happen year round? It is from January to December, or does this particular PM or this reminder item only happen during summer months or between May and September? Outside of those months it’s not going to ever trigger. The description, what are we going to do? Here’s what we are to do. We’ve seen some customers really good at telling me they are defining very unique steps that are happening related to this particular task. Whatever you include here will become part of every one of this work orders that are generated off from these reminders.
Summary is going to keep track of cost information, how often it’s done, when was the last time it was done as well. Assets, you can assign a single asset or multiple assets to each one of these tasks and, in this case, I have six different assets associated. When these PMs are generated, I am going to have six different work orders because each of these assets also carries its own unique work order history.
You have the option to predefine who is going to do the work. In this case, I have predefined to Paul. So Paul is my technician who maybe because he is trained to work on this items, he has got certain certifications. Maybe the laborer has a third party contractor that you guys utilize to perform, or you can associate your own technicians or a third party contractor to each of these items, but you don’t have to. You have the option to.
The plus of pre-assigning as well though, especially if it’s a technician who does receive e-mail that whenever the trigger points happen and these work orders are generated this technician will also get a notification that they are assigned to a new work order. As this items are automatically occurring Paul will get the notification when this PM work orders are being created. You can predefine what parts may come into play. Any other cost elements. This is your undefinable list as well that you can determine. Do you want to do any kind of inspections? Whether it is just general inspections or maybe you define certain specifications or conditions related to these assets that you want your technician to view each time these PMs occur.
Activity. There is a couple of different ways to utilize activities. We’ve seen some companies utilize it in lieu of their description. Instead of defining everything at the description page, they utilize activities to list everything that they want done on this frequency. In this case, a monthly. Or another option you can utilize, like I am doing here as well, is maybe a certain things that fall out of frequency. For example, this second item only happens every three months, this one every six months, this one every 12 months. The system that is based on these time frames went to include each of these activities to these PM work orders. You can add documents, and whether you’re printing your work orders, if you’re printing them they’ll go with the printed work order too. You can hand over to a technician along with the inspection checklist. If your technicians are picking these up on their mobile devices, these documents can also be viewed on their mobile devices as well. There’s a place for comments in user definable field.
Always down her, and on this list as well, we’ve given definition to things that we want to occur. This is where we set up our PMs. This is where we set up our reminders to do our inspections, reminders to do calibration, reminder to do whatever you want to have a reminder for in MicroMain that may occur on the certain frequency. Here now the next step is, how do these then become work orders from here. You have a couple of option with MicroMain. The first item to talk about is to have the system automatically create these work orders for you. If that’s the case, then the system will know based on the trigger element whether it’s a meter or it’s a time element, when these work orders need to be created and you can determine if you want it.
So, it’s going to look at the due date basically. If something always happens on the 15th, that is considered the due date for that particular PM, and you can make the determination whether, “Do you want that to happen?” That work order generated right on the 15th, and it’s going to be done that day or do you want to set up some kind of buffer window prior to the 15th? Maybe you want to have these work orders or these PMs generated three days in advance, four days in advance, seven days in advance. Whatever that time frame could be you that you’re given your click nesting time to not only receive the work order but to manage that particular PM.
Once that occurs, they will appear on your work orders list in a requested status whatever type you’ve called them preventive, inspection calibration. From here if you are not utilizing mobile from here is where you can then issue this work orders and get them printed out for your technicians. If you are utilizing mobile and your technicians are already pre assigned to those PMs, they can already pick those up on the mobile devices even prior to them being issued. The more popular choice is, again, how to get scheduled is to have the system automatically create them for you.
We do have some customers, however, that do like to manually control the generation of their PMs. For example. I recently worked with an organization that every Monday, they want to print their PMs for that week. How they do that in MicroMain? I am going to show you here. Again, if you want this system to automatically schedule this for you, you would not go through these steps. This is only if you want to manually control when you want to create your PMs.
They are going to utilize this task scheduler and the first step they’re going to do is create a schedule. So how far out advanced do we want to generate our schedule to? Is it going to the end of the month and the next month, end of the year, the year 2020? You can make that determination. Let’s just say, for example, I am going to run this through the end of the year, it generates a schedule. I want to delete my current schedule. Got a few meters I think I need to update here. All right, I have generated my schedule through December 31st.
What this organization does now is, okay, now they’re going to utilize this create work orders to and they’re going to take this data in. So, for example, let’s say that came in yesterday and they want to run this for the rest of the week, they’d have it go through the 26th, for example, and say we want to create all the work orders through that date, and we want to print them. So they are going to create them also print them. I am not going to go that far I am just going to go through today through the 21st. I have got several that are on my list that are through today. All the way through here, let’s say create work orders to. I am just going to pull this off my schedule. They are no longer on my schedule, then I go to my work order. Let me refresh this, here they are now in requested status waiting to be issued. So again, if you are utilizing paper, work order still and you are not going to utilize mobile, from here is where you can issue the work orders and get them out to your technicians. If you are utilizing mobile and your technicians have access to all the work orders or to workers to which they are assigned, they may already be able to have visibility to these work orders on their mobile devices.
From here, how do we get these printed if you’re issued? Couple of options. Obviously, the more tedious option would be to go into each one of these individually. I am going to double click on the work order number and I want to issue this. Maybe I want to make sure it’s assigned right now so I have to find anybody that could take all day to try to get all these PMs, especially if you’re doing multiple PMs a day. If you have a large labor staff that are out doing your PMs, that could take a while. What we do have available for you is the batch work order status. I am going to click on here. This gives me the option to change status of a work order but also to assign staff. For example, right now, I am working at requested status work orders, which also include my PMs. I want my new status to be open, which means this is issued. Do I need to assign any of these work orders out to any of my technicians?
This far last column, the A let’s me know, if there’s an asterisk, it is already assigned to somebody. If there’s no asterisk there, it’s not assigned to anybody. For example, I have got these items here. Let’s say, I’m going to grab several of these at a time. I’m just going to hold my shift button down, grab these four. I want my new status to be open. I want to go and get these assigned to Marty and, if I am utilizing mobile, I can just hit “okay” and now Marty can pick them up on his mobile. If I am not, if I am still printing my work orders and printing my inspection points, I am going to check this box. Not only is it going to be assigned to Marty, Marty can get that e-mail notification but then all these items are going to the printer: the work order itself, the PM work order, any inspection checklist, those e-documents that you’ve associated with this PM are all at the printer, waiting for Marty to run with these items.
I actually going to uncheck this box, or else these really will go to my printer and my office manager wouldn’t be too happy. Hit “okay.” These four are going to disappear off the screen. They’ve gone from requested to open status and now they are assigned to Marty and Marty can now run with them. I am going to refresh this. Here are these four right here. They’re now in open status. If I click on one of these now, it’s assigned to Marty.
How do we close out these work orders? I am going to show you how to close them out from the main application that we’re looking at here. For example, on this one, Marty has a work order for this boiler. What are we doing with the boiler inspection? All right, let’s say Marty has done the work. He’s added his notes and, for example, here’s [inaudible 00:29:39] the printed item would look like. Not only do we have the inspection checklist, we have only got one item on here but there maybe multiple items that you are inspecting that would appear on this list. We also have the work order itself. This is what a printed work order would look like. The work order number, the service, the asset, if any of these items apply, they would be checked off, who is doing the work, he can add his time, if any parts came into play, you can add those parts, any other costs elements. On an unscheduled work order, you may be tracking failures, but we can also track downtime, loss time and so forth.
Marty’s doing the work. Let’s say, okay, how long does it take him? It’s estimated one hour to get it done and it maybe took him hour and fifteen minutes. Did he have to utilize any parts? This is really an inspection that he is doing, so maybe there were no parts that came into play but if we were to add parts, he would click on add. I have got this filtered to only show me parts I’ve associated with this asset. You can create parts to asset relationships in MicroMain. It’s really helpful, especially when you have certain belts or bearings or filters that you may carry multiple sizes because, depending on which piece of equipment you’re working on, you want to make sure your technicians are grabbing the right items. So, create the part to asset association so I know that I’m grabbing this size of this part because that goes with this particular piece of equipment.
In this case, I’ve got this widget stored in three different locations. Where am I going to take it from? Maybe from the bottom item. Click okay. How many did I have to use? If I had to use parts, I can specify that here as well. No other costs. We did inspections. Based on the inspection, there was a certain specification and depending on, was it at 70, for example. I doubt it be that low related to the boiler. It fell outside of that range. You can create a high and low range for a specification or condition and, if the measurement or the rating is outside of that realm, the system will automatically fail that inspection. In this case, it automatically failed it. Now I have the option, do I want to create a work order to forward this failed inspection. Maybe what I am doing right now is not the work, maybe I am just doing the inspection. Now I need to go back and notify my boss that yes, boiler one did fail this inspection.
Here’s the corrective action that we need to take and you can add on to this. If I am going to create a corrective work order from there and, by the way, I can do this from my mobile device as well. I can create a corrective work order from my mobile device. Hit create work orders. I’m going to hit okay. A new work order has been created in the background to address this failed inspection. Nothing else that I am going to add here. So I am going to go back here and I am going to now mark this as “complete.” I have an option to assign it to an account for category. I already updated my time spent. Was there any downtime with this inspection? There may not be. If you are checking downtime and there was, you can always update that information there, if it’s one hour. We already updated our part. There’s no failures. If this particular asset had any meter readings that we needed to update, I can update them here. Hit okay. This work order is now completed. It can be reopened from the main application if need be. Once you do complete a work order from the mobile for web module, it cannot be reopened. It can only be reopened from the main application.
In the background, here’s that one that we just created, failed inspection point from work order 1601. So it’s referring back to the originating work order of something that’s failed. Under the description, what happened? It was measured at this and it should be between this range and this range. If there’s any other corrective actions that were specified by the technician, they would be listed here as well. Looking at your PMs, your unscheduled work orders, all those items will flow into the main application. We talked about your parts, parts inventory, being able to keep track of all your parts. I’m going to open up a part here. This is an alpha numeric field. What is it, details about the part. What kind of part is it? Where is it stored? You always know what you have on hand. What’s available? What’s reserved? Reserved mean what’s reserved for an open or requested work order. As work orders are completed, the system will automatically update your inventory levels. You can upload a part, keep track of your different suppliers, cross reference it. If this part is out, do we have another part we can use to get the job done?
Under the order page, that was where you can keep track of your order units, costs as well. It’s where you can define your minimum inventory levels for each part and keep track of all your costs and you can determine whether or not to utilize the [inaudible 00:34:38], [inaudible 00:34:40] or average cost methodology. It’s also to help you manage your cycle counts but, as mentioned, you can create parts to asset relationships to make sure that you’ve associated this part with the right assets that you’re maintaining. Also, you can issue parts, receive parts, order parts. There is a PO system built under the MicroMain. You can even transfer parts between locations and, of course, perform your part counts.
Everything that you’re working on is an asset. We have area asset and equipment asset. If I am looking at a piece of equipment, a lot of data I can store. I don’t have to keep it all. I’ve just got to know the name and the property but where is it located? This one does have a parent asset. I can keep track. I can upload a picture of it. The details page, again, as mentioned before, when did we buy it? When did we install it? What is its useful life? When should we consider replacing this asset? You have that replacement information right here that you can utilize to run a replacement projection. Contacts, if you associate certain technicians with it, here’s where you can keep track of certain specifications or conditions that can be utilized as an inspection point.
If it’s a metered asset, what meters are you monitoring? What parts have you associated with this asset and numerous other information can be utilized, including movements. Are you moving it from one location to another? One parent to another? The system will keep track of all that as well. One of the big items is history. How often are we repairing this item? How often has it occurred? If I click on history, this page is going to default to show me the last 12 months but I can update my date range, see the work order numbers, the service, what type of work order was it? Was it just my PMs ? If I am just looking at PMs here and that’s probably good thing. Maybe this equipment is never breaking down but if I’m seeing a lot of demand or corrective or unscheduled, whatever you call your work orders, then that could be a red flag that, “Man, we are really having a lot of requests that are coming in for unscheduled maintenance for this particular item.” If you are tracking costs, what kind of costs you are incurring as well. From here, once you update your date range, you can even print this, preview it or even e-mail this out to somebody if necessary.
Part of the loop, again you’re planning your work, you’re scheduling it, you’re performing it. You want to report against what you’ve done. In MicroMain, there are over 600 reports that do come standard with the application. We recently just had a version update that is adding some additional reporting functionality to the system. We call it Power Reports. It will be a new option on this blue bar once I do upgrade my system as well. We do break out these reports into different groups, assets and so forth. Under the asset group, I’ve got a lot of reports that are asset specific: depreciation report, condition log, diminishing return, downtime. What kind of downtime are we incurring for this time frame? We have print, print preview, export to Excel, so every report, you can export that to Excel. Here’s an example of the downtime that we’re having for these different assets, just based on this time frame.
Here is also where you can run your equipment list report, reports based on failures. Couple of reports that the a lot of our customers really do like as well are the highest maintenance cost and the highest maintenance issues. These two reports, the highest maintenance cost, what are my 25 assets that are costing me the most to maintain. Highest maintenance issues, what are my 25 assets am I having to maintain more often than other? A lot of reports that are available here. Under completed work orders is where we start getting into, how long is it taking for us to complete work, whether it be scheduled or unscheduled? What kind of cost can are we incurring? Different costs element reports that are available. For example, [inaudible 00:38:29] want to run a summary and, from a filtering stand point, I have got standard or advanced filters.
Standard, as I start adding elements, it is going to utilize an and statement. If I want to create an and/or statement, I would use advanced to create that. If it’s one that I may use pretty regularly, I can even save it and it will appear in my dropdown list as one of my saved filters. For example, maybe I want to see everything that’s happening in a certain building and maybe in a certain asset group or to a certain asset within that building. I am actually going to pick a different building, just to kind of show you what I will be covering. For example, if you have several pieces of equipment that are similar, we do recommend placing them into groups. It really helps, from a reporting standpoint, versus having to grab each one of those assets individually, if you want to get a group report for all those pieces of equipment.
Maybe in this case, all my air handlers in this building, maybe I just want to get year to date information. I can select my action. I am going to preview this. Here are my filters and it’s a work order cost summary and, because we track labor, parts and others, it’s going to break out each work order by those elements as well as giving my totals. Again, I use these items a lot in my demos, so we have 29 pages here. I can also get my grand totals as well for this particular asset group. If you’re utilizing inventory in MicroMain, there’s a lot of reports available to that, including inventory usage, parts usage. What is my inventory on hand? I want to be able to know what’s on hand, what’s the dollar value of my inventory. Here’s my inventory, where it’s located, my quantity and what’s the dollar value associated with my inventory.
Some reports are available in graphical representation as well. How many work orders are we completing for a certain date range? I can update my date range. I am going to select the appropriate action that I want to run. Here is just one example, the bar graph, and I can see my totals at the top as well. The different types, again. These are your own work order types that you’ll define. Labels, if you are utilizing bar codes and you want to create your own bar codes out of MicroMain, you can do that here.
Batch reports, again we have a lot of reports that come standard with the application. A lot of our customers, though, they want to minimize the time it takes them to run these reports. What they are doing is they are creating batches. Maybe you have certain batches that you run daily, weekly, monthly or certain categories of reports, “Hey this are my label reports. These are my part reports.” You create batches for all those items as well. Just give the batch a name, assign the appropriate reports within that batch. You can then associate your filters as necessary. Once you select your action, the system will run all those reports that you’ve associated with that batch.
As mentioned, I’ve talked about our power reports. What’s that doing, that’s actually utilizing Excel functionality, basically exporting that information into Excel, into basically a pivot table where you will have your filters to utilize to be able to manipulate the information there. It’s really come in handy for a lot of our customers that do want to customize their own reports, if they understand how to create that [inaudible 00:41:41] string to generate the right data out of the application to create those custom reports. Again, just a little bit on the application here. Getting back to the slides, what questions do you have for us?
Can we schedule to run reports automatically? Great question. Currently, the scheduling of reports is not available functionality in MicroMain. I definitely can see how that would be very important, whether it be your scheduling that goes to a certain printer or go to just to your desktop in a pdf or to somebody’s e-mail address. Currently, that function is not available at this time. The best we can help you out at this point in time is with our batch reporting.
Can we import existing parts? Importing. Yes, you can import existing data into MicroMain. We offer a couple of different data services related to that, whether we are sending you out our data templates or you are providing us a copy of your data that we can then import in the MicroMain.
I’ve got a question, what’s the advantage between a previous option and the current version? One of the biggest difference between one of our previous versions is really related to the tasks. Historically, the tasks with some older versions, you had to manually create when your PMs were being generated. Some of our customers still like that, but a lot of our customers are moving toward the automated fashion, where the system is automatically going to generate your PMs, based on those trigger elements. That’s probably the biggest difference between previous versions, like a version 7.5 to where we are today, is the system can automatically generate your PMs in requested status for you, based on those trigger points, be it weekly, daily, monthly, annually. Other big item is, of course, we do have the dashboard now. It’s available to see some quick hit information about your work orders and, as mentioned, one big item that’s coming out with our most current version is this power reporting tool. It’s really going to open up a lot of new ways for our customers to be able to generate those reports and “slice and dice” utilizing the filters to be able to generate the right information that you are looking for.
You want the task to occur every Friday for example, on a weekly PM, is that correct? Or is it just that you want, if it’s done monthly, you want it to occur on a Friday. Just want to make sure I am understanding. Heidi, can you retext in. Would this be for a weekly PM?
One way you can do that is, with the weekly option, you do have the ability to determine this happens every week. Well, on what day of the week do you want it to happen? Do you want it to happen on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday or Friday? You can pick the day that you want to be the due date each week. If you want the system to generate these in an automated fashion, then, let’s say I want something due on Friday every week or due on Sunday every week, but I want to allow myself, for these weekly PMs, a seven day buffer windows. These are being generated seven days in advance or six days in advance. Even though my due date is Friday or Sunday, it’s going to generate on a Monday, for example. Every Monday, my weekly PMs are there waiting for me in requested status to be, whether I am picking them up on mobile or I am printing them off into my printer.
Heidi: Marty, we had a previous question regarding setting up a hard reserve on parts as well as a soft reserve? Is there any kind of [inaudible 00:46:02] that we can offer?
Marty: Being able to define a minimum, you can define your minimum inventory levels within the application and then set up an alert but it is what it is. We have some customers that say, okay, for this particular item, I want to set up a minimum inventory but do I want to be alerted for it? The alert is global. If you are defining minimums for any of your parts and if you do want alerts, then the alert will look at all of your parts for which you’ve set up minimums.
As far as being able to, there is a question relating to MicroMain interface with another solution that’s managing parts, yes and no. We have integrated with some other solutions more from an accounting stand point, to be able to send over certain information or for purchasing. Related to parts though, it is not one that I have personally seen. It doesn’t mean that we cannot do that, but because we do have the parts inventory built into MicroMain, we do have some customers that, even though they are managing parts elsewhere, they may still list out the parts in MicroMain that they want to associate with those work orders and then just utilize that data to help update part inventory in the other application but not one that we’ve integrated today, as far as whenever a part is used in MicroMain, you’ve set it up that it’s automatically going to create that notification to a third party part database.
Okay, I know that there maybe other questions that we maybe not have gotten into. By all means, please feel free to reach out to, if you are a current customer of MicroMain, please feel free to reach out to your customer account manager. He or she can assist you with any additional questions or if you are possibly new to MicroMain and considering MicroMain, please give us a call as well. We’ll have different regional account managers that you can contact and that can assist you with more in-depth questions, do a much more in-depth product demonstration for you as well, including showing the mobile functionality, if mobile is an item that you are interested to as well. I do want to thank you for your time and thank you again for taking time to view the MicroMain Webinar and do hope that all of you have a very, very productive day. Thank you.