In the competitive manufacturing industry as it is today, continuity of production is a must. Losses occur because of unplanned downtime. Prior to any scheduled maintenance, Manufacturing Maintenance Software is very essential on the part of asset management and maintaining the maintenance on time with the least disturbances. It centralizes insight and automates to optimize equipment, extend life cycles and increase margins. This article will go in depth about the most integral parts of clever Manufacturing Maintenance Software and its duty in Efficient production maintenance.
Table of Contents
What Manufacturing Maintenance Software Offers
Less Unplanned Downtime: Through Asset Management
Centralized asset records: All asset information is not centralized; maintenance planning is easier, and it is faster to troubleshoot. Technicians can quickly pull a history of a specified CNC machine and identify repeated causes for production downtime.
Asset Hierarchy: Assets must be organized hierarchically to visualize the inter-related equipment and improve maintenance focus. Production lines can be immediately diagnosed with cooling system pump failure.
Asset Tracking: Follow asset location and status for mobile equipment as well as tools is equally important for speed in urgent repairs on the go. Identifying the location of portable welding machine speeds up deployment.
Criticality assessment: Assigning criticality levels to prioritize maintenance efforts as most critical as per production impacts. This minimizes the risk of major downtime, for example, the failure of a critical injection molding machine.
Work Request & Work Order Tracking
Work Requests: web and mobile user-friendly portal to make submitting maintenance requests for equipment a friendliest affair for all employees. This allows for quick visibility of matters such as new noises, or leaks that cannot be delayed.
Work Order Management: We leverage the automation of requests into proper work orders, filled with asset details, issue and assign priority; they are then routed to the relevant technicians / teams based on skills and availability.
Scheduling and Task Management: Maintenance managers can schedule work orders based on time constraints, equipment criticality and production schedules. Large tasks can be decomposed into steps to record the progress of technicians or recording of detail.
Tracking and History: Real-time updates on the status of all work orders through automated notifications from creation to completion are shared Informative history of completed work orders, including issues and parts helps to identify patterns and improve planning for later.
Preventive Maintenance (PM)
Maintenance software for manufacturing facilitates the scheduling of recurring PM activities on time, usage or calendar date-phased to proactively prevent failures. Setup Frequencies and automated work order triggers (e.g. lubrication every 10 operating hrs. Using frequency. Scheduled PM means no steps are saved and standard checklists/procedures can be mapped against the PM workorders made standard execution on these available.
Mobile Accessibility
In the modern manufacturing environment without a strong solution for mobile capabilities right within maintenance software technician mobility is critical and accessing information is imperative on the go. Mobile features — viewing and changing work orders, asset history reads, push notifications of all types right to your smartphone or tablet. Data, measurements and notes as a technician draws a work order are directly incoming in the said order which means no more paperwork and none zero chances for errors. Unmetered/Offline access makes the app is always up even if application has no Internet. Proper performance of the task is supported by digital checklists and procedures. This is made possible with barcode/QR code scanning for fast access to asset information or images/videos to support condition and work documentation.
Maintenance Calendar
Maintenance Calendar in software gives a high-level planning and coordination of upcoming maintenance activities. Shows work orders, PM tasks and records as daily/weekly/monthly views to appear on the calendar. Drag and drop for simple re-scheduling with technician allocation to visually prioritize workload. Users can filter and sort data on assets, technician, work order type/preference. The calendar clearly shows technician availability and therefore avoids conflicts of scheduling, as well optimizes resource allocation. Color coding across quick links to work order details provides a visual, snapshot overview that gives details on maintenance type, priority (or) status phenomena.
Reports and Dashboards
The Manufacturing Maintenance software provides comprehensive reporting and dashboards for data-driven daily maintenance improvement as well greater equipment effectiveness in continuous support of. Through them, they offer some great maintenance insights such as:
- Overview of work order stats (work orders started, worked, open and with which status as well as creation/completion time stamps):
- Downtime Analysis, duration and root causes for the long outages – what is repetitive in my downtimes and which assets have the most hours down.
- Monitoring while controlling and optimizing labor, parts and contractor labor for maintenance budgets.
- Compliance tracking for preventive maintenance to track health of the program by hitting when scheduled on time.
- For asset performance metrics such as MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures), MTTR (Mean Time to Repair), OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness)
- Technician Performance KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) such as if they are on time or behind, how much they have left to accomplish for that day and how efficiently.
- Spare parts inventory information, level of use and re-order points
Spare Parts Stock
Maintaining a spare parts inventory within the maintenance software properly is one of the most important to reduce downtime and set parts costs by preventing over stock of key parts. Key features
- Physical Location and Quantity on Hand/ Stock Available.
- Low stock and purchase order creation with status tracking are automated.
- Linking part consumption to work orders and assets to track frequently used stuff and how they are used.
- Inventory valuation for financial reporting.
- Efficient part requests — technicians can scan barcodes/qr codes with their mobile equipment to request and allocate parts Automatically clubbing consumables to work orders by technicians.
Workflow Automation
Software features for workflow automation boost efficiency, minimize errors and enable maintenance teams to manage the high-value, complex tasks by doing less of routine process through automation.
Some examples are:
- Example automated creation of work order by PM schedule, reading meters or equipment condition
- Notification on work order status and overdue tasks with escalation rules for outstanding problems to the people concerned
- Automated approval chains to work and purchase request flows.
- Work Order data, as well as sensors read into an asset record directly allowing for automated populating of the work orders.
- Maintenance Specific Workflows to customize workflow with specific maintenance needs (e.g. emergency breakdown workflow).
Vendor Management
Manufacturing maintenance is normally done by external vendors for services or parts. The software gives you relationships tools to handle these relationships, such as:
- A centralized vendor database with vetted providers and their details (contact, contract and pricing) up to date.
- Monitoring of contract terms and SLA, Deadlines notification.
- Functions to create and track purchase orders for vendor services/parts.
- If you want to monitor the vendor with respect to on time delivery, quality service or contract compliance, use tools.
- Integrates communication and collaboration to improve work order information to create, request quotes.
Integrations
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems: utilizing an integrated business perspective (e.g., automatically uploading maintenance costs into ERP) for asset data, work orders, inventory and cost transfer)
Industrial Control Systems (ICS) and IoT platforms: To gather performance data of the equipment in real time, to perform maintenance based on reality not pre-set schedules.
Conclusion
Manufacturing Maintenance Software is a must have for any modern manufacturer that wants to perform best in class asset performance management and avoid that Costly downtime. Through this centralized maintenance, automation of certain processes and delivering wisdom it enables forward thinking maintenance and operational agility. The manufacturing future is not going to be reliable, profitable and productive without proper Investment in the right Manufacturing Maintenance Software.
