In this month’s CMMS webinar: 8 Steps to Successful CMMS Implementation, Mark Stellfox discussed an overview of the CMMS Implementation Process, focusing on how one should prepare for their new system. Mark reviews the eight steps that will ensure your CMMS implementation will be smooth and that all needs are met with the maintenance system.
Did you find this webinar informative and helpful? If so, please be sure to join us for the next one!
Webinar Transcription
I’m going to talk about the eight steps to successful CMMS implementation. We’re going to start out with a survey here on the screen to help understand who our audience is. We’ll have a few of these throughout the webinar so please check off your answer. I’ll give a few seconds for everybody to hit yes or no and then submit. Go ahead and look at the results, and you can see how many of us are currently using a CMMS versus not. I’ll go ahead and get started here. Let’s talk about the overview. We’re going to review the main components of a CMMS, talk about the ways to use a CMMS, implementation process and eight steps to successful CMMS implementation. If we have time at the end, I’ll come back and answer any questions.
The CMMS review defines your requirements including goals, expectations, any hardware you may need, timelines, and you want to choose a CMMS where its main components fit your requirements. Make sure the software includes the main functionality you’re looking for today as well as any features you may need in the future. Keep in mind this is a long-term investment and you’ll be using these tools for many years to come. Another thing to consider is add-on functionality that may be important with the initial purchase, or you may want to add down the road. MicroMain offers some add-ons with the most common being a web request module which allows unlimited people to request work from a webpage with mobile functionality for creating or updating work orders on a smartphone or tablet. These are all things to consider.
Ways to use a CMMS. There are several different ways here. Create work orders to track and report on services: who does the work, parts used out of your inventory and other costs like materials or rent equipment to do the job. Preventive maintenance management: set up your PMs either calendar-based (daily/weekly/monthly/yearly) or meter-based (based off an odometer or hour meter). Asset management: every asset is like a room, building, office, any equipment assets like air handlers or other equipment you maintain. Parts inventory: parts you keep in your stock room. You keep up with their suppliers, cost, min-max levels. You don’t have to have a lot of money sitting on your shelf. Purchase orders: you can use to order parts, services, or assets. Inspections: routine tasks such as property or building inspections along with any equipment inspection. Fleet management: such as vehicles, trucks, and forklifts. You want to generate reports out of the system, keep up with any contracts and all your suppliers and vendors and all that information within the system.
The implementation process: you want to identify your needs, research and contact vendors, schedule web demos, and choose a vendor. We’re going to be talking about the pre-implementation, implement and then review. Here’s another question. What is your primary concern? I’ll give you a few seconds here to go through it, check off and submit. Some could be work order management, response to corrective maintenance, reporting on maintenance activities or preventive maintenance. Another five seconds, and I’ll skip to the results. Here is a little bar graph. Looks like most of you are concerned with work order management and then preventive maintenance right behind that. Part of the next slide here. The eight steps to successful CMMS implementation. First one here, take inventory/do your homework. Review your buildings, equipment, parts, labor, vehicles you want to track with the system. Consider any unique situations you may have. Many implementations fail because the database isn’t properly set up. Take the time to identify what you want to maintain or report on at your facility. Do that homework upfront and save you that headache down the road. Move on to the second one. You want to pull together your PM’s. Schedule PM’s based on what you know is necessary to keep them up and running. One of the main sources of cost savings from a CMMS is through managing PM’s and inspections to reduce failures, emergencies and increase the usable life of assets. Every equipment manufacturer has recommended maintenance schedules, but no one knows better than you what’s necessary to keep your equipment up and running. Go on to the next slide here. Number three, you want to consult with your IT department.
Even if you implement a hosted solution, you may still need support from your IT to ensure your network can deliver good performance at peak times. Decide who’s going to provide support when issues arrive and understanding the components of your CMMS will help you isolate and avoid delays when problems occur. You want to consult with your IT department or group upfront to determine if your company wants to either purchase an on premise version installed at your site or go with software as a service solution or hosted solution otherwise known as SAS where it’s hosted by the vendor, and you access the software online through a web browser. Both options have pros and cons. Your IT department can help you decide which is best for your organization. Number four, prepare your data. Clean up your incoming data to get you up and running faster.
A CMMS vendor can help add significant value when helping prepare for and perform data importing. Be sure to know what’s required of your new system before going live. Implementations are often delayed when parties don’t fully communicate data import requirements. Determine what you want to migrate either from an existing database, spreadsheets or start from scratch. Be sure to communicate all this with the vendor upfront. This will help avoid any unexpected delays and keep you on schedule. I have another question here. How many users will need access to manage the system? Go ahead enter your results. Maybe a couple more seconds for whoever forgot to get theirs in and then hit the submit button. You should see a graph up on the screen. It looks like 0-10 is 75.9 percent. Some of them are real big. We have 3.7 down in the 51-100 range but most of them are going to be in the 0-10. Go on to the next slide here. Step number five, you want to test your hardware and software. Don’t waste valuable training time and not have your system working properly. Every CMMS vendor has stories about arriving on site to train and having to start by taking the server out of the box. Make good use of your training dollars by completing installation prior to the scheduled training. Be sure to have all the software installed and tested before the trainer arrives unless that’s part of the services package. You want to make sure the end users get the full training so they get the most out of the software instead of our trainer having to cut into the training session short and cut those short by testing and installing the software when they get there. It’s also a good to have the user set up with a sample database so they aren’t making mistakes in the production database. I remember hearing stories about our trainers getting to the customer training sites and sometimes they had arrived at the customer site and realized the customer didn’t have the training room set up. Sometimes the software even wasn’t installed. The trainer would take time to install and test the software which of course will cut into the training time and take away from the value of it. Other times everything was smooth sailing. Everything went according to plan. The software was up and running. When they got there, classroom was set up with computers loaded with the sample database that our users could be trained on. The point is be organized, formulate a plan, and stick with it. Your vendor can help you with all that. I’ll go on to number six here. Determine your reporting needs. Discuss with your staff, managers, and other departments what types of reports they would like to see out of the new system. Thinking about reports ahead of time will help ensure the system is set up, configured, and used in a way that will get you the information you need. This also could be helped by the vendor during the training to help you set that up because that’s going to be the most important part of it—getting the reports out that you need. Number seven. When you get trained, consider both the depth and breadth when designing your train plan. You want to get enough people trained so they can help each other with daily tasks and a few trained on all aspects of the system and its administration. Consider purchasing future training perhaps six months after implementation. Make sure you’re getting the most out of the CMMS by adequate training to all users. Be sure to have at least one or two or three people trained on the entire system so they can become the expert and help others when needed. They are usually the ones who contact our support team or dedicated account manager to get those questions answered and possibly report back to the staff users at your site. Number eight, you want to audit your CMMS. You want to schedule PM’s for your CMMS. Use this time to ensure you have the latest version of the software, you’re getting the reports you need and you’re taking full advantage of its capabilities. Check with your users to see if anyone has questions. Decide if any new employees may benefit from formal training or even refresher class for the others. Performing periodic PM’s on your CMMS. It protects your investment and maximizes the maintenance management savings for the organization.
You want to check back with your vendor to see if you can utilize any add-on modules that you may not have purchased upfront such as web request module logs for people to submit the work request from a web page instead of calling, emailing, or pulling out a paper and handing it out to someone. Also, if you haven’t already, look at going paperless by adding mobile software that works on smartphones or tablets like an Android or iPad. Mobile software helps improve accuracy and efficiency. Another question here. Would a hand-held device help you improve maintenance performance and manage workflow? After you fill those out, I’m going to give you a quick demo just hitting some of the high points of the software, show you a couple of reports, preview the web request module and the mobile software, and then we’ll recap for any questions. I’m going to go ahead and skip over to the results here in five seconds. It looks like 80 percent think that would the mobile device would help improve maintenance performance. I’m going to jump over and, like I said, give you a quick tour of the software and just hit the high points. Here is the main application. This would populate the database from the information I see they’re going to be imported in, or you’re going to enter into the system manually.
The top level of MicroMain is going to be the site. That’s where I’m at. Now your site location: any properties you’re going to maintain under there, the building that reside under those properties and assets that reside under those buildings. Assets in our system are broken down by areas which could be a room, building, parking lot, different units itself, equipment assets, and any vehicles that you may have will show up under a fleet section—trucks, forklifts. A lot of details you can capture here within the asset. Let me open up this air handler PM. You name the equipment tied to the property, what building it’s located at, floors located. You can do parent-child relationships. Add in a description and other location identifiers—department, wing room, zone, manufacturer, model number, serial number. It’s good to group for reporting purposes. It can break that into a sub-group. You have your account mode you can capture for budgeting purposes.
For workflow, assign it to different shops within the system. You can keep up with the asset picture, other details—replaced by replacement costs, salvage values, useful life, supplier, cost information, purchase date, install date. A lot of details within the system here. It always translates over to the reports. We have over 500 reports in our system. Keep up with your warranty information and the expiration dates that will check off and notify the technician on the work orders, and any documents related to it. You might have a lockout tag out procedure attached, a set of instructions to maintain it. You can input your staff or your personnel that’s going to be using the system. Keep up with all their details—phone numbers, pictures, financials, training certifications with expiration dates which are reportable also. As you can see, you can also keep up with any contractors, suppliers, parts inventory. The other thing we had mentioned is your PM’s. That’s going to be set up under the task over here. You can see I have several tasks in the system and those tasks are going to be performed calendar-based (daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) or meter-based (more based off of that odometer or hour meter).
I have several tasks listed here at the bottom. Air handler PM, annual inspection, clean the windows, fire door, fire extinguisher inspections, truck service, vehicle oil change, weekly cleanings. It could be a simple reminder. You’re going to set up all those scheduled tasks here. Those are going to be turned into work orders based off the information in there based off that frequency. You can pre-assign who’s going to do the job, the technician, any parts they need to take with them, and it’s going to show up on that work order so they’re ready and prepared when they get it. I’ll take you over to the reporting on. We have over 500 standard reports in our system and those are broken down by groups.
You can get into assets or asset downtime, asset meantime between failure, completed work orders, get into a completed work order cost summary report, whatever groups you find. You have your parts inventory. You have budget and cost information, purchase orders. You just select the reports you want. It tells you a little summary, what’s in it, and then you can either print it or point the screen right to the printer with a bunch of built-in graphs under the graph section. The best thing is to set up your batches. Whatever batch you pick, either reports are going to get printed out when you select them. I’m going to give you a preview of our web request piece. This allows unlimited users to submit work request and check the status of those requests. Instead of them calling or emailing, they fill out this simple form here and submit a request. All this requester has to do is their information as populated when they log in. They have a set defaulted when Todd logs in. It’s going to come up with his information. This is his office here.
You’re going to control what they see through the main system by checking it. It will broadcast it over here. You want to keep it simple for the requester. They might come in here and say, “Repair a leak,” type a description up, and submit a request. This will create a requested work order right in the system, email a couple of people if you have it set up to email – maybe the maintenance coordinator or some of the technicians. And then from there, I’m going to take you in and show you the mobile software. This is a mobile interface here which allows users to submit those or complete work orders on the hand-held either by creating new work orders out in the field or doing the work assigned to them.
Here’s an air handler PM for this technician. On the software, they can come into the labor time in and time out or just update their time spent, add any parts or update the quantity they used. If you have inspection points, they show up on the hand-held. They can collect meter readings, track other costs out in the field, see the details of the work, the description of what needs to be done plus add any comments under the comments section of the work order and complete it right there out in the field. That’s a quick preview just hitting highlights. I’m going to stop sharing here. And so I want to thank everybody for your time. If there are any questions, feel free to put them in the chat or contact for more information, and we can get your account manager to have a conversation with you on the phone, or if you want to handle it on email and take it from there. I’m going to hand it back off and let Daren and others to answer any questions that might have come up.
DAREN: Hello, my name is Daren. We had one question that came in about the mobile product that Mark showed about what product those could be used on. The mobile devices can be used on Androids, iPhones, or tablets and its web browser basically. It can also be used on any browser on a laptop or PC as well. One of the other questions that have come in seems to be about being able to show how to complete inspection points on the hand-held and can you generate a new work order from the inspection points. I don’t know if Mark is still on. If Mark is on, then he has a work order that has that under. He could have shown that. At its current stage on the mobile device, you can’t create a new work order off of an inspection point. You can in maintenance management. One of the future version is coming out this year. We’ll have it on there.
Judy Summer asked if whether user licenses for mobile is licensed per user. It’s not for the phone or the database. It’s more of how many concurrent users you’ll have. We also have another question about Windows mobile devices. Yes, our mobile product works on Windows mobile devices. We have mobile for pocket PC which works specifically on pocket PC’s and then mobile for the web which is strictly a web-based product. There’s nothing that’s actually downloaded on the unit itself. It can go to Androids, iPhones. It’s not based on any one operating system which includes the Windows phone. I had another question come through. Does MicroMain integrate with AutoCAD docs for assets? We do have a facility management product that might be useful to you. You should contact your account manager to discuss field management more.
It does use BSW’s, DWF’s which are derived from AutoCAD drawings for space management, but it’s more of a space management product. We had a question about can data be cut and pasted into a database using both Word and Excel. There is a document tab on almost all the forms that allows you to link documents to work orders. You can cut and paste using those. I don’t know if I got to everybody’s questions. I’m going to run back through them and I’ll answer them either through the chat, or I’ll send you the information through an email offline. Is there any last call for questions? We have one more question about using barcoding for inventory management. There is barcoding in maintenance management depending on which version you’re on.
You can check inventory in and out with barcodes and stuff like that. What it doesn’t do is allow checking inventory through a barcode. We have a question. Can symptom and correction codes in the dropdown menu be used? There are codes like that that can be used in maintenance management, if I understand the question correctly, like defect codes and such. We have a few more questions that I’ll get to offline because it’s going to be a little bit deeper explanations. I think that wraps up the webinar for today about 8 steps to successful CMMS implementation