Developing CMMS Implementation Templates

Daryl Mather, Maintenance Consultant
Posted 9-11-03

Throughout the course of this article the term CMMS will apply to the maintenance module of Enterprise Resource Planning systems, Enterprise Asset Management systems and stand-alone maintenance management systems.

In this year literally billions of dollars will be spent, in many different countries, on implementing CMMS and enterprise level systems. Some corporations, such as RIO TINTO and BHP, have attempted to circumvent a lot of this cost by developing implementation templates for use across their global operations.

CMMS implementations follow basically the same course every time. Yet most times there is an attempt to re-invent much of the approach. However, in general, maintenance is maintenance and apart from differing business rules the majority of the information required to set up the system will remain similar.

Although the template designed by these particular organisations are specific to their needs, modern technology and the rising awareness of CMMS systems have created the opportunity for creating a generic template for all implementations. This is becoming possible through standardised coding philosophies, warehousing of often-required data and tapping into on line resources such as vendor cataloguing systems.

Any template for CMMS implementation needs to have a focus on the following areas. Again although modern CMMS systems are able to cover areas of operations, HR, financials as well as maintenance the focus here is on the maintenance end of any implementation.

• Defining of corporate direction and rules
• Highlighting areas of mass data requirements
• Defining training required
• Implementation and embedding processes

Addressing these areas, initially, is a complex task that requires much thought in order to define these in a generic sense so that they can easily be adapted to any implementation. An attempt has been made to outline the various areas where guidelines can be created so that all that is needed is the refinement to suit the requirements of each organisation.

Defining Corporate Direction and Rules

This is the most critical of all areas as it sets out the requirements for all other areas that are to follow. Many problems during the later stages of CMMS life are due to poor attention during this stage of the implementation thinking process. By developing decision making guides as well as standardised approaches the resulting implementations will at least cover all of the relevant issues pertaining to efficient CMMS.

This is a wide-ranging area covering such items as:

1. Define the high level KPI’s that the corporation wishes to use to monitor and control its performance. For example:
   1. Unit costs
      1. Unit costs for maintenance
         1. By Equipment
         2. Per employee
         3. As a measure against Estimated Replacement Value of assets
   2. Overall Equipment Effectiveness
      1. Availability
         1. Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF)
         2. Mean Time To Restore (MTTR)
      2. Utilisation
      3. Quality

2. Defining what is capital works and what constitute operating costs.
   1. What criterion determines a plant improvement?
      1. What constitutes like for like replacement?
      2. Changes to Process and instrumentation drawings?
      3. Changes to operating improvements?

3. Defining authorisation levels in dollar cost terms of each role within the maintenance organisation. Thought needs to be given to bottlenecks that any levels here may create.

4. Determining a prioritisation system that will allow the best use of resources across the corporation. For example:
   1. Are resources to be used across various plants?
   2. Are resources to be used across various sites?
   3. What are the structures of the work groups or teams to be included?

5. Determining what are the definitions of various types of work orders.
   1. Safety
   2. Capital
   3. Maintenance

6. Determining what are the definitions of various types of maintenance and setting levels to be used as benchmarks.
   1. Preventative Maintenance – 50 %?
   2. Predictive Maintenance – 30 %?
   3. Corrective Actions – 10 – 15%?
   4. Breakdowns - <5%
   5. Standing work orders – Their needs to be an initial focus on this area, determining which items need to be covered by standing work orders. Although there are many approaches it is best to utilise these for overhead items such as training, holidays and breaks. Use of these as blanket work orders elsewhere will blur the results available from the CMMS system.

7. Defining business processes and the KPI measurements required for controlling these. Examples may include:
   1. Backlog management
      1. Age by Priority measurement
      2. Number of safety work orders (trended)
      3. Planned work orders per work group
   2. Planning/ Scheduling systems
      1. Planned/ Scheduled ratios
         1. Planned / Scheduled – 80%?
         2. Planned