Now obviously I have taken some short cuts here – one of the problems being that our friends and colleagues in the software business realise there are sales advantages in the specific way their tools are described; and so the lines get blurred.  But for a starting point this is a workable solution.  But you will also note that I have dared to introduce the concept of a “Best of Breed”.  And that begs the question of what isn’t “Best of Breed” and why?  Typically we look as a best of breed solution as one that has been designed and tailor-made to serve the unique needs of the maintenance community. 

The accepted alternative to Best of Breed is a Hybrid – i.e. a system or module that was originally designed for a largely non-maintenance purpose but has been developed and expanded to meet the needs of maintenance, AND (to confuse further) may well be integrated with best of breed maintenance modules.  To look at the potential difficulties of this adaptation from non-maintenance to maintenance, think of the following.  Think of the difference between an inventory system designed for managing a production inventory (small numbers of items for raw materials, work in process and finished goods but often huge volumes of each), compared to the spares inventory that is needed to support Maintenance (a huge range of items, but relatively small quantities of each.)  Hybrids come in many shapes and flavours.  The following gives us some examples – there are many more variations. 

The next question is what I regard as the most important question in Maintenance – So What?   Increasingly the answer is that as far as the functionality is concerned, the labels do not really matter – they are only useful in trying to disentangle the jargon (and TLA’s) of maintenance systems so we can more or less talk the same language.  In reality, overwhelmingly the deficiencies that we find in the use and application of the systems are not caused by the functional limitations of the systems.  Quite the reverse – the systems usually have far more functionality that even the most advanced Maintenance Planner can use in a lifetime. 

In a recent discussion with a power generation company and their maintenance systems vendor, they disclosed that this user was the most advanced in the system use of any in the vendor’s fleet – but their usage only approached about 30% of the total functionality o the software.  Should we be surprised?  No – the vendors have been actively and competitively extending the capability of their systems since the early 1980’s when they hit the market in full force.  As a simple parallel, almost everyone uses a spreadsheet (Excel for example) – but how many users stretch its capacity beyond a marginal 10% or so.  I certainly don’t! 

Thus the “So What” is this is that unless the users have some very specific requirements that are unique to their own business or company, then the basic system functionality of pretty well all of  the leading systems is not the limiting factor. 

Then what is?   I will offer two complementary suggestions – first the general ignorance of senior management of the capability of this expensive tool to drive maintenance improvements.  And secondly, the lack of a knowledgeable and persuasive person who is dedicated to extracting more value out of the system – who is looking for ways to actively improve the system’s contribution to maintenance.  I’ll expand on this experience next time around.

Response to: “So What Is a CMMS / EAMS Supposed To Do?  Part 1” (by  James Reyes-Picknell) 
I agree with Ben’s excellent points and advice to readers but I’m afraid that one of them get’s far less attention that it deserves.  Specifically, his comment about “the general ignorance of senior management of the capability of this expensive tool to drive maintenance improvements” deserves a bit of attention.  I’d argue that it’s far more than “senior management” that is ignorant of this point.  What about maintenance managers and others in maintenance who see the system as a sort of silver bullet?  Blaming senior management is a bit of a cop-out.  Why do we in maintenance expect senior management (who often come from production, engineering or finance backgrounds) to know anything about maintenance?  Try a bit of role playing and ask yourself how much you really know about finance if you don’t quite see my point.   

Based on my experience with many clients and many who have not become clients, maintenance people are very often quite uninformed about their counterparts in other parts of the organization.  We tend to be technical people focused on repairs and putting out fires.  Don’t just take my word for it either.  Terry Wireman’s benchmarking results reveal some interesting statistics: 
·        Only 30% report 100% of labour hours against work orders, 32% report 100% materials issues and 35% report all maintenance work 
·        98% don’t include tools in their plans, 34% track backlog by craft, 20% track work by date needed, half checked 50% of estimates of actuals vs. estimates in performance tracking 
·        57% use time only PM, only 66% include some form of PdM 
·        Only 20% have inventory service levels above 95% 
·        1/3^rd track less than 70% of material issues to work orders 
·        Only 17% integrate maintenance systems with production, 14% to payroll, 31% to accounting 
·        Only 34% report 75% of their personnel as proficient using the maintenance system 
·        51% review equipment downtime but only 24% examine by downtime cost 
·        59% have no connection between their PdM and maintenance management systems 
·        Reliability engineering measures all hover around the 50% mark 
·        64% do not report financial effects of equipment availability / reliability within the organization 
And there is more. My conclusion is that we are still largely reactive, either ignorant of or unwilling to really tackle reliability issues (probably because we are up to our collective butts in alligators) and we are maintenance techies not businesspersons. 

If you doubt the last statement then another of Terry’s statistics is helpful: 
·       Only 19% have incentives (payments) are tied to performance 
·       Only 19% of salaried supervisors have a career training program 
·       70% do not train planners and 
·       50% rate the skill of their technicians and poor! Perhaps it’s the lack of incentive, but bottom line – we are not good businesspersons.   If we know and interact so little with the rest of the organization, then how can we expect them to “get it” when it comes to maintenance issues? 

I’ve seen many justifications of CMM / EAM systems that cover costs of software, hardware and “implementation” but fail to cover the full costs of getting the maintenance improvements the system can support.  The system is a “tool”, not a “solution” regardless of what the various “solutions” vendors will tell you.  It’s imperative to change the way you work and in many cases, what work you do, if you wish to get the full value.  Those costs are usually ignored in the business case because the full cost may kill the initiative.  Clearly if that’s the case we’ve either understated the benefit we can truly derive or it may simply not be worth the expenditure on the tool and its implementation. 

Remember that blaming others won’t get you far and it will destroy credibility.  Make a fist, hold it out and point.  Notice how many fingers point back at you.