Ten more CMMS mistakes

Here are a few more words of wisdom that prevent stumbling with this important tool

Kevin Louche, President, Champion Consultants, Orangeville, CA

In June of 1996 the print version of this magazine published an article titled Ten critical CMMS mistakes. The response from readers was tremendous. This follow-up article gives the next group of ten that extends our list.

Mistake #11: Not operating your business in terms of information management
Your business processes can be modeled by a series of computer programs we call a CMMS. Although a computer program cannot anticipate everything that can happen, it can deal with a high percentage of such events. Therefore, your business-maintenance, materials, procurement, human resources and accounting-is an exercise in information management. A computer is essential because information cannot flow efficiently in a paper-based system.

The mistake is that managers and employees are not thinking in terms of information management. When a production problem or even a labor relations problem pops up, the root cause is often tracable back to information flow. The basic question is stated simply: who should know what and when should they know it? Think of a recent work-related problem. If a report had been printed and read or an E-Mail message sent, couldn't the problem be avoided? Efficient information flow even avoids some legal problems. Many times initialing an item or sending a memo avoids future problems. Managers should consider the defective flow of information as the root cause of many problems.

Mistake #12: Not understanding the concept of a relational database as the building block of your CMMS
We don't propose to turn everyone into software engineers but everyone should understand the basic database architecture within your CMMS. To understand database architecture is to understand your business. This knowledge also helps when preparing or requesting reports.

There are only three basic data relationships:

• one-to-many,
• one-to-one, and
• many-to-many.

Now, using these concepts, sit down and map some of your CMMS relationships. One work order has many steps. One purchase request has many lines. One work order can be assigned to many purchase requests. The possibilities go on and on. Your CMMS vendor should provide a simplified "entity map" but many do not since the vendor may feel this information is confidential.

The "entity map" is essential for users. Understanding it makes every CMMS user a better user and this ultimately increases the return on the CMMS investment.

Mistake #13: Delegating CMMS access control
Access control is a means by which CMMS users are given control to view, update, and delete data. A typical CMMS has hundreds of functions and thousands of data entities for which access must be defined.

Many managers don't understand access control. This is not surprising if they are making Mistakes #11 and #12. Often the manager asks a clerical person to manage access control. This is a mistake. Your clerical person may be granting extraordinary authority to a person never intended to have it and that person may use the CMMS to commit an unlawful act. For example; an employee may access addresses and phone numbers of other employees and stalk them. An employee could use the CMMS financial data for some kind of embezzlement scheme. Perhaps industrial espionage is not incomprehensible a possibility.

Often access control management is passed to a systems programmer. Such programmers probably know little about your business, let alone your legal exposure-another mistake. The only solution is for the manager to become an expert in this aspect of the CMMS. Study the manuals. Consider the access control templates. Test some of the templates. Give out as little access as possible only on a "need to have" basis.

Mistake #14: Choosing a CMMS with few audit trails
There are never enough CMMS audit trails. These are the records that indicate who made what change to an existing CMMS record. Consider the Purchase Order. Once it is sent to a vendor, it should become a static document that never changes since the vendor is reacting to the order. But there sometimes is a need for change. Your CMMS must provide an audit trail on purchase orders that indicates who made the change, what they changed, and why they changed it.

Other important audit trails include part history (who changed the reorder point and when) and the time history (who worked on which job and what day). Also, an audit trail on assets and preventive maintenance procedures should be considered.

Some CMMS systems provide few if any of these audit trails. This is a mistake. The more the merrier. Hard disk space is too cheap for you not to have sufficient audit trail data.

Mistake #15: Not knowing the optimum size of a report
Have you ever requested a report and discovered that it took a small forest to print it? The usefulness of a report is inversely proportional to its size. You probably do not take the time to thoroughly digest the contents of a large report. Your associates will not do it either. Such reports are too big to handle and the information contained within is probably outdated and is more easily accessible on-line.

On the other hand, a small report, say two pages, is considered important. Whatever is in it is probably a summary or a focused selection of CMMS data that demands consideration. In this case small is beautiful.

Lack of a concept of an optimum report size is a mistake made by both requesters and CMMS specialists. If someone requests a large listing, the CMMS specialist should be wary. What is the requester going to do with a mountain of paper? Often the solution is a report that can fit on two pages.

Mistake #16: Not understanding the concept of information discovery
In any business environment some things need to be communicated immediately, some things can wait until later. The mistake some people make is not distinguishing between these two extremes. For example, parts arriving for a planned job demand that someone be notified immediately. This can either take place through E-mail or a pop-up window. On the other hand, data concerning labor utilization rates can wait until the managers want it.

Between these two extremes lie other methods of information discovery:

• the CMMS automatically generates month-end reports and produces summaries for later viewing and printing,
• direct on-line lookup allowing users to browse documents such as work orders assigned to them,
• automatic printing of work backlogs, and
• ad hoc requests of backlogs data.

Mistake #17: Not recognizing "mentor" students.
CMMS training can be frustrating. Many users resist change. They are afraid of the computer. They want to stay with what they know.

Then there is the student that shares the vision. The student can see that information flow is going to improve everyone's worklife. When you see such a person, cultivate them. First, make sure they understand the business processes and the CMMS. Then later, when others in the department ask for clarification, refer them to the mentor student. These students can explain the CMMS better than you and are closer to the business of the department.

One caveat-this does not always work. The mentor may not want to assume a leadership role. Co-workers may not want to work with them. However, it is worth a try . Having a department CMMS expert helps spread the word.

Mistake #18: Customizing a CMMS in-house rather than getting the vendor to do it for free
Many CMMS installations are customizations of a standard package focused on the business realities of the customer. While this sounds like a logical way to get the best site-specific CMMS, it gets expensive once your system needs software upgrades. The customizations need to be transferred to the next version. Some clients have sufficient financial resources to afford this but for most, customizing the base package and each upgrade is out of the question.

There is an answer. Get the vendor to do it for free. If the customization would apply to other users as well, the vendor should be interested in doing it for free. Their benefit is access to your business logic as a model for their software. They can add the customization to the baseline product and offer it to all users.

I was involved in making a customization of a CMMS package several years ago. It was an equipment calibration add-on that enabled users to trend equipment calibration readings over time. I presented my design to the CMMS user's meeting and they adopted the design and incorporated it into the baseline package the following year. Not only did my client get a customization for free, they got a customization tailored exactly to their needs.

Mistake #19: Not understanding how organizational structure affects CMMS architecture
This strikes at the very heart CMMS implementation strategy. The question is one of how the organization is defined. The major considerations are

• maintenance centralized or decentralized or mixed and
• how procurement and material receiving is distributed.

Mistake #20: Not employing the critical equipment concept
Particularly in process industries, critical equipment identification provides necessary focus for the organization. Once equipment is defined as critical two important results follow:

• parts in the warehouse for this equipment are automatically defined as critical and
• work orders on this equipment are automatically justified as having high priority, if necessary.

In the case of work order prioritization, it solves the debate between operations and maintenance about work prioritization. If the equipment is not critical-its loss does not materially affect production-then work orders on the equipment are not to be given high priority.

The debate over priorities is now elevated to which equipment belongs on the critical equipment list. This is where the debate belongs, at the process production level.