In this month’s webinar, How a CMMS Supports Manufacturing: Marty De Los Santos discussed how MicroMain Maintenance helps our manufacturing users. He showed the importance of using preventive maintenance to keep equipment working, how work orders are made when equipment is down, and the ways in which inventory prepares you to minimize downtime.
Webinar Transcription
My name is Marty De Los Santos. I’m an account manager here at MicroMain. In today’s presentation, we’re going to be talking about how a CMMS supports manufacturing and particularly how MicroMain maintenance applications support manufacturing. A little bit about who we are. We are headquartered in Austin, Texas which is where I’m located as well. We have been providing manufacturers with award-winning enterprise asset management and facility management software for 22 years. We do also preventive maintenance and facility management software and services.
We do have over 3,700 customers worldwide. Here are just some logos for some names of whom a lot of you may recognize.
CMMS helps manufacturing several specific items: meeting production goals, plant-specific needs, maximizing equipment availability and extend equipment life which is a very key item that we do here from time to time for our clients about how do we make sure equipment lasts longer, be able to project budgets accurately, organize data and operations, and reporting. Reporting is a very key feature as well. One thing in MicroMain we do have over 600 reports that do come standard with the application. It also has a very powerful reporting tool. Of course, with all that information, it gives you and the decision-makers the ability to make well-informed decisions.
I have a question. Take a moment please. Fill in your response, click submit and skip to results. We’ll show the results here shortly. If you weren’t able to get your results in, I apologize, but we do have a time constraint. It looks like work order management is a primary concern for folks within the audience. Some respond to corrective maintenance, reporting on maintenance activities. Preventive maintenance is a fairly close second. Those are the two key items. We’ll be sure to touch on those today.
How do you keep your equipment up and running basically with preventive maintenance? Preventive maintenance: be able to determine priorities and track your goals, view a timeline to assess operations by day/week, track key performance indicators through our reporting tool. Of course, you can save time by reducing downtime or even drive time as well. As you can see up on the header, the MicroMain application, we do have mobile capabilities with it as well.
Preventive maintenance: scheduling out your PMs provides an easy way for you to set up and track all your PMs that you’re scheduling. PMs can be set up based on time like daily, weekly or monthly or even by meter such as every hundred miles or hours or use or even a combination like every so many miles or every three months, for example, you can set those trigger points up as well.
Of course the idea with preventive maintenance, you want to plan it and schedule it. You want to execute your PMs, report against it and with that be able to learn from past experience as to how that may affect future activities that you may be performing on those assets.
Let’s get into the application itself. We’re looking at the MicroMain maintenance application. We want to talk about work orders… is one that came up, and the PMs. We’re looking at the work orders list page on MicroMain which is housed under actions, work orders. Task is where we manage our PMs. Just to quickly touch on both of these items. Work orders from a corrective standpoint for your assets can be generated in different fashions. One, we have a web request module which allows non-maintenance folks to be able to submit corrective items to the maintenance departments and those will appear in this listing in requested status.
I can also come here and create a new item start a brand new work order. In MicroMain the service, the property and the asset or really all we need to do the work. Pick your service. You’ll define your own service items. Pick your assets whatever that might be. Based on the asset and its profile, it would automatically populate the building and the property. I can issue this work order. Depending on your workflow, some of you guys may be issuing this to and the technicians just grab it and go. Some of you guys may pre-assign labor to your assets. Whatever your workflow may be, the system will work for you. But just to kind of show how this goes in order, we have an assignment page. I have the ability to assign it to a department, account, shops, sub-shop and so on. Again these are optional fields you can utilize. I can tag this as a logout/tagout, safety or shutdown related item. Do I have any attachments? Am I doing any inspections? Description: what I want done. Description will pull off of the service that you defined, but you can also add to it whatever this may be. It’s a very lengthy field where you can be very descriptive about what you want to have occur on this work order and this will print on the work order as well as be visible via mobile. Summary is going to keep track of your cost data. You can add your labor for tracking purposes. You can pick and choose whom you want to add whether it would be your own technicians or even third-party technicians. You can grab even multiple folks at a time.
You have some filtering tools down below. Labor contacts assigned to asset. Maybe this asset is an item under warranty. The part of your warranty requires that a certified technician or technician from the supplier does the work and you want to associate that person or that third-party entity with this particular asset. If you have multiple properties, only assign labor assigned to that property. You can add your labor. You can add parts. There’s a parts inventory piece as well. Pick and choose the appropriate parts. If you want to add whether it would be a single part or a multiple part, you do have some filtering options down below. Once you’ve added those parts you can then define your quantities that you’re utilizing. There’s a place for other cost tools and other items as well.
Here very easily I can issue this work order. I can now send this to the printer. I can email this. If your technicians are utilizing mobile, they can capture this on mobile devices. When it comes time to completing the work order, I can complete it on mobile. I can complete it here as well. From a labor, maybe your technicians told you that each of them took a couple of hours to do the work. Maybe it took a couple of parts as well. You can make your edits to the work order. If completed, it opens up this window. I can assign it to an account category. I have another opportunity to update my time, update my downtime if you’re tracking downtime or parts. If you utilize failures, what caused this equipment to fail and which is why it needed to be fixed. Hit OK. My work order is now done. I can reopen if necessary.
Tasks will ultimately end up where we just were on the work orders page. For task, the idea here is you’re trying to prolong your asset life and so you do want to create or schedule your preventive maintenance items so that this regular maintenance does occur. Real easy. Just click new, give your task a name, whatever you want to call it, define the frequency. I already got a test. Just do a new one here. Define a frequency for it and how frequently you want it to occur. You have the different options here, as I mentioned, with meters whatever the meter may be or timeframe. I’m just going to call those on a monthly. Add some scheduling dates which allows me to define if this is a year round PM or does this only occur during certain times of the year like maybe only during winter, during swimmer. You can define your date range.
Describe what you want done. You can get very detailed about what will be done during this PM. Summary is keeping track of your cost. Now you can add your assets—single assets or multiple assets. Maybe you want to pick a few here. Hit OK. Now these assets are all on this PM. If you wish, you can predefine who’s going to do the work, what parts you need to add, any other costs, any tools that are utilized. You can add inspection points. We’re talking about prolonging the life of your equipment. There may be specific items that while your technicians are doing the work that, “While you’re there, these are some observational things that we want you to check on as well.” Maybe you want to check the fan blade or check a belt or make sure the fluid levels are correct within that piece of machinery” or things along those lines. If any of those items fail, you can create corrective work orders off of a failed inspection point and define your corrective action as well.
There’s also place to add activities. The nice thing here is that there may be other activities that do not necessarily follow the frequency that you’ve defined. Pick and choose activities that you may deem necessary for that piece of machinery. Go and add those. You can be very specific of what this activity may be and then also give it a timeframe. This is monthly but every two months this activity will be done, every three months maybe this activity, four months and six months, whatever the case may be. The system will know based on this timeframe to add these items to the work orders every two months, every three months and so forth. It allows you to create one single PM without having to create separate PMs for the same piece of equipment.
Once you get these created, you’ll then utilize the task scheduler to get those on to schedule and to generate your PMs, and ultimately they will reside on your work order’s page which is where we started. Let me get there again and close this out. They’ll ultimately reside here in requested status and whatever type you’ve called them whether they’re preventive PMs, routine. You’ll define what your type is. Here now you can either individually issue these PMs or utilizing the batch work order status. You can grab several at a time to say, “I want to go and issue all these PMs, take them from requested status to open status.” You can even assign them to a technician. If utilizing paperwork orders, send them to a printer as well. Click OK. Those documents, those PMs plus any inspection documents, any other attachment documents that you may want to include like pictures of the asset or certain instructional items will all flow to the printer and be available for that technician to grab as well.
I got another question for you guys. Are you currently performing preventive maintenance? I’ll give you a few moments to answer this. It looks like the majority of the folks are which is great. You guys fully understand the benefits of doing PMs on your equipment.
What happens when equipment is down? Work orders. We do have a web request module which allows your non-maintenance folks to submit request 24/7. It reduces your incoming calls. It will also create the tracking mechanism. If there’s an email notification that’s also submitted when these requests are sent in. The web requesters can check the status of their requests at any time as well. As I mentioned before, work orders can be picked up via mobile. I can inform a technician out in the field. I can see what work orders are assigned to me or I can even see what work orders are not assigned that I can pick up and assign myself to go do the work. I can update my meter readings, perform inspection points, add parts to work orders, create, modify and close work orders, record time worked for one or more technicians. There are numerous other tools that are available via the mobile device as well. With work orders, being able to define your labor, add inspection points, look at documents, keep track of your assets and parts.
Now we’re going to take a look at the web request piece for one moment. I talked about it earlier to be able to submit this. Again, something that you can allow your non-maintenance personnel to utilize and even allow for guests to login. So for folks outside your organization depending on what kind of structure you guys have. This request is for George Strait. I know who he is. I’ve got his email address and phone number. I’ve set up some certain parameters for him as well. I’m not allowing him to change his property, asset or service. You don’t have to do that. This happens to be on my sample database as created, but you can control who has access to this. Is it everybody in your organization? Is it only management level folks? You have that ability to control who can do this. They’re going to come in and give you description on what’s going on as well as defining what assets or property if you’ve opened up these fields for them. It could be something as simple as it is hot or maybe a certain piece of machinery on the production line is down.
It could be numerous items that come in. When they click submit they get a green confirmation bar, email notification to send to whomever you determine should get that notice, be it a single person or multiple folks. The things you’ll be able to see is this information right here. A request where I can see the status right now it is still in the requested status. This will flow into the application as their requested work order. Of course that will flow into here which is this work order. Here’s our description. It is hot. I can also grab this via mobile device. I’m logged in as one of my technicians.
Here’s the submission we just had. It’s a work request. It’s currently in requested status. Any details, who the requester was, description, here’s the note that we added, “It is hot.” If I’m going to run with this work order, I want to go and open this work order. I want to add labor. Maybe I want to add myself to this work order. I’m logged in as Paul. I can add additional folks if necessary. I can define how long it took me to complete this work order whether I’m defining an in and out time or maybe just total hours. Hit save. I can also add parts to this work order. Maybe I’m driving it from the main storeroom. Grab a part. I only need one part here. If I needed to grab multiple parts, I can do so. It’s saved. If there were any inspection points to find, I can manage those here. If I’m updating meters, here as well, or I can even add other costs. I go back to the work order itself. If I want to add any comments, I can add comments. I can update the description as well. Do I need to define anything else? Am I tracking failure codes? Why am I doing the work? Am I managing the downtime? Once I’m done here from my mobile device, I can mark this as completed. Once I’ve done, it can no longer be edited from my mobile device. It’s now closed. If I go back to here and look at my completed all, here’s the work order that we just completed via my mobile device.
Another question for you folks. Would hand-held mobile devices would be beneficial and helpful to help you manage your workflow? As you saw, I can grab those items and you can even put user rights associated with your mobile users. Do they only see their own work orders or do they see all work orders basically? How to prepare to minimize downtime of your inventory? Basically utilizing inventory parts: being able to streamline your account process whether utilizing mobile devices, pocket PCs to download part lists, generate part inventory control reports, reduce inventory carrying cost by analyzing your parts, stay on track with transaction logs and other reports like inventory reports, create your own numerical rating systems. It allows you to assess and record the condition of one or more of an asset’s physical properties.
There are several different ways to help in this area as far as minimizing downtime. Along there, let me just get back into the application again. Within MicroMain, under resources, we do have our parts inventory that you can manage and control. There are some filtering options across the top. So I’m just looking at a single part. I’ve got the part, whether you call it by name or some kind of code, this is an alpha numeric field, give it your details and manufacturer model, your class that it may fall under, where is this part located, on-hand reserves and available. I can add a picture of the part, keep track of my suppliers, cross-reference. The order page allows me also to do a few things as far as keeping track of my order units, unit cost and my minimum inventory level. This is a key item here to make sure that if any of your production equipment goes down that you’re not short of the parts needed or that may be needed to maintain that piece of equipment.
You can define your minimum inventory levels. You can even set up an alert within the application that will alert you if that inventory level falls below your defined minimum. Here you can also keep track of your cost information whether you utilize Fifo, Lifo or Average Cost methodology. One thing you’ll notice on the part, I did have this part in three different locations. You can even define your minimum inventory levels per location as well. If you notice on the very bottom, I showed total work on hand, reserved and available—reserved as to how many of these parts are reserved for open or requested work orders. And as work orders are completed and parts are used, the numbers will update automatically.
Within the part, you can associate with an asset. Let me actually get to an asset as well. I’m just going to pick one that I know I’ve got parts association here. We’re talking about maintaining the life of your assets and being able to define that within each asset, we do have a details page which allows you to define when you purchased it or started leasing this piece of equipment, what is the useful life, when should you replace it by, when did you install it and all reports you can generate in the application to determine depreciation of this piece of equipment, replacement projections so if you don’t want to be blindsided by upcoming costs down the road, maybe in a couple of years you’ll have some equipment too that needs replacing, you can generate a report out of MicroMain utilizing the cost information and you can define your own inflationary percentages to see what is this going to cost us to replace again. If you’ve done the work and you’re regularly maintaining your piece of equipment, it may help you to say, “This was a 10-year useful life, but we’ve been able to get 2 more years out of it because we are regularly maintaining our piece of equipment.”
Over 3,700 clients that do utilize MicroMain—many in manufacturing, both heavy and light manufacturing customer examples that we did have one in HVAC. They’re missing necessary information to make informed decisions. The history associated with the equipment and the parts, that information that was lacking, and by installing MicroMain, they were able to reduce their maintenance cost by 52% and overtime was down by 48%. You’re keeping track of your cost, keeping track of asset history, keeping track of labor. You’re able to generate reports. How long does it really take for us to complete this work? Is it taking some technicians longer than others? If need-be, maybe that’s a training opportunity to help certain technicians get their time down for working on that piece of equipment. You can maintain asset history and information. It can empower you to sustain an efficient maintenance process which then ultimately provides more equipment uptime which is really what you’re shooting for especially in your production area and saves you money by reducing maintenance expense and downtime by increasing your labor efficiency.
If you have any questions, please do feel free to submit via chat.
The MicroMain application, we do have several customers for which integration or interfacing with other solutions has come into play. Out of the box, it does not integrate with any particular application that would require a customization to create for that integration. Very often we see folks that want to integrate it with their accounting applications. Working with them will determine what kind of integration this will be. Is this an export/import type of integration? Is this web services integration where data is moving between web services back and forth between the MicroMain system and another application?
Todays’ webinar with how CMMS really supports manufacturing, of course we are MicroMain. We’re specifically talking about how our solution specifically helps manufacturing with defining your preventative maintenance, your work orders, mobile capabilities. Of course, some feedback we hear from existing customers as to why they ultimately decided to choose MicroMain and why they continue to stay with MicroMain is that it is a very easy to use system. The flow of it is very straightforward, having the ability to even grab work orders via mobile device. Again it is the mobile solution, it’s not device-specific so whether it would be iPhone, iPad, Android or some other tablet or smartphone you can utilize our mobile capabilities. It’s not restricted to Apple products or Android.
We have a question about being able to make edits specific to assets in the applications. Yes, they’re very easy to edit whether you’re editing just the name of the information or specific information within the profile of that asset. One thing we hear from time to time as well though… Let’s say we have an asset. It’s time to replace it. We’re now adding a new asset in its place. What do we do with the old one? You just inactivate that asset. You don’t delete it because you still need the ability to report against what you may have done to that previous asset.
Barcoding is an item that some of our clients utilize for both for parts as well as even maybe for assets whether they’re utilizing a smart device to capture the barcode or even pocket PC.
I think we’re about come to the end of today’s webinar. I do want to thank each of you for taking time from your busy schedules to join us. As Madeline mentioned at the start, this webinar on how a CMMS supports manufacturing is recorded, and we will have it posted on our blog by tomorrow. Of course, if you have any additional questions for us about CMMS, preventative maintenance, facility management, etc, do feel free to give us a call. Our toll-free number 888-888-1600 and you can get it to sales line to get to the appropriate account manager for your region. Thank you very much and enjoy the rest of your day.