Getting started with a maintenance management system
It's not unusual for an organization to spend many years talking about implementing a maintenance management system, but often find getting started to be the most difficult part. Follow the steps below to gather the information necessary to tailor landlogic's maintenance templates to reflect the local conditions, circumstances and resources of your organization.
Step 1: Get staff involved
Employee understanding and support is essential to the development of a successful management system for several reasons. First, employees generally know their jobs better than management does, and can provide valuable information when determining time standards, task frequencies, and task descriptions.
Second, employees are responsible for putting information into the completed system on a daily basis. Without a basic understanding of the process, the accuracy of that input may be open to question. Finally, involvement of the entire staff serves as a system of checks and balances while the CMMS takes shape.
Step 2: Establish Goals & Objectives
Make certain that goals and objectives are clear, realistic, and achievable. Focus on problems and priorities that are of particular interest to the department. Communicate the goals and objectives freely, both inside and outside the department. Finally, be prepared to modify goals and objectives after further analysis.
Step 3: Inventory your Assets
All components must be quantified and described precisely, including such things as number of ballfields, acres of turf mowed, linear feet of fencing maintained, square footage of building space, etc. Make extensive use of aerial photographs, maps, and plans. This background data must be retained and updated continually as improvements and changes are made to existing resources and facilities. Great care must be made to develop an accurate inventory of all resources. Without an accurate inventory, the following steps are difficult to accomplish.
Step 4: Indentify Recurring Tasks
For some organization this process is both difficult and time-consuming, and will need regular revision and refinement. Of necessity, this listing should primarily involve those recurring tasks that are performed on a routine basis. At this point in the development process, the maintenance manager must begin narrowing the scope of the end result. Management decisions regarding task categories should be brought into focus. Tasks are combined and grouped into categories according to agency and departmental objectives. The end result of this step in the process should be an approximation of the total routine workload of the department
Step 5: Determine Task Frequency
Determine the frequency at which each task should be completed. Tasks should be reduced to their simplest component, and task frequencies should be established at a minimum level (annually, bi-annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily.)
Step 6: Establish Resource Requirements
Establish the number of man-hours necessary to complete each task once. Although the number of man-hours necessary to complete many tasks can be greatly affected by variables such as weather, equipment breakdowns, vandalism, etc., estimates should reflect conditions as they generally exist. Many organizations already have good techniques for measuring work performance, including technical estimates, statistical standards, and engineered standards.
Step 7: Organize Workloads
Project that period when each task should ideally be completed. Many modifications are necessary before this step is complete since all tasks cannot be completed at the ideal time. The end result of this step is a monthly or weekly calendar onto which the necessary man-hours for each task has been charted. The recurring departmental workload is now in manageable and scheduleable segments of time.
Step 8: Assess available manpower
All available full-time, part-time, seasonal, and federally-funded manpower must be included in the analysis. If available manpower exceeds the total recurring departmental workload, all routine tasks can conceivably be accomplished with time available for one-time projects and improvements. If, however, available manpower is determined to be less than that needed to accomplish all identifiable recurring tasks, then additional manpower must be found or service levels reduced.
Step 9: Prioritize Projects
Assuming that available manpower exceeds the man-hours needed to perform all recurring tasks, the next step is to identify and prioritize all projects or one-time improvements. Estimates of man-hours needed for each project must also be developed and incorporated into the monthly or weekly schedule.
Step 10: Record Activity
Data regarding location of work performed, costs, and man-hours utilized should be gathered and maintained on a daily basis. Depending on departmental goals and objectives, all data generated should be analyzed regularly. Obviously, mechanical or electronic data processing is easier, however, manual systems in a more-simplified context are feasible.
Step 10: Evaluate & Adjust
Any MMS must change continuously as demands, objectives, resources, and conditions vary. A well-formulated MMS must be flexible for it to be effective.