MAPCON CMMS Blog

January 16, 2025

6 Tips for Excelling in Preventative Maintenance and Management

As a maintenance manager, you face daily challenges. They come from everywhere. Management, team members, and production line personnel. You deal with emergencies, backlogs, deadlines, and budgets. How do you cope with everything to be successful? Not only in your department but to further the success of the company. This article will explore six tips to help maintenance managers succeed.

Of course, I could list twenty or more attributes or qualities you should have. However, let’s keep it simple. The six areas you’ll read about include:

Also, let’s see how a computerized maintenance management system can help you with each of the six tips.

January 15, 2025

Leadership Strategies for Maintenance Managers: How CMMS Enhances Maintenance Management

Whether you call them managers or supervisors, the head of the maintenance team plays the role of leader. Responsibilities include hiring a quality team, providing training opportunities, and striving for maintenance management success.

Other roles include:

• Scheduler
• Budgeting
• Implementing maintenance operations

They set goals of:

• Reduced downtime
• Reduced safety measuresv
• Regulatory compliance
• Cost-effectiveness
• Increased worker productivity

January 14, 2025

How To Improve Production Efficiency

All companies want to cut costs. One of the ways they do this comes directly from the production side. They look for how to improve production efficiency. This article will suggest seven ways to up that efficiency.

Key Benefits of Production Efficiency in Your Operations

1. The aforementioned reducing expenses lie near the top of the list. However, where do these costs originate? Labor. Maintenance. Parts. Cost of equipment. Resources.
• Let’s look at each of these in turn.
• Labor – As you’ll see later, training employees also leads to better efficiency. You’ll hire the best-skilled workers with experience. Or provide training for those who lack the necessary skills.
• Maintenance – Again, read on for more discussion, but proper maintenance extends asset life and reliability.
• Parts – Included in maintenance. Proper maintenance keeps inventory costs down since technicians use fewer parts.
• Cost of Equipment – Maintenance and trained employees affect this. More years of use means you don’t incur the costs of replacement.
• Resources – Having the correct quality materials that the equipment processes lower costs.

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January 13, 2025

Work Requests vs. Work Orders: Understanding the Key Differences

Challenge: Name the differences between a work request versus a work order.

Answer: The first asks, and the second directs.

This article will explore deeper than the obvious answer.

January 09, 2025

Success With Preventive Maintenance Checklists

Actually, what this article will present will not only fulfill preventive maintenance (PM) checklists, but those for other repairs. Checklists provide step-by-step instructions. Some maintenance tasks require a certain order of completion. With a checklist, you help ensure the technician completes all steps.

Read further for:

• Benefits of Using Maintenance Checklists
• Types of Maintenance Checklists
• Steps for Creating a Successful Preventative Maintenance Checklist
• Best Practices for Using Maintenance Checklists
• Enhancing Checklist Efficiency with CMMS Software

Many of us use checklists every day. Home projects include setting up a backyard swimming pool or swing set. Homeowners build furniture and model cars from kits. Each of those projects has a set of step-by-step instructions.

January 08, 2025

Understanding Stock Turnover Ratio

The goals of companies across industries include how to trim expenses. For those with dedicated maintenance departments, one of the areas to track will be the stock turnover ratio (STR). In this article, we will discuss the following:

• What is the Stock Turnover Ratio (STR)?
• Benefits of Tracking Stock Turnover Ratio
• Best Practices for Successfully Using Stock Turnover Ratio
• Challenges in Maintaining an Optimal STR
• Improving the Stock Turnover Ratio
• The Role of a CMMS in Managing STR

What is the Stock Turnover Ratio (STR)?

This metric serves as a barometer for the efficiency of spare parts investment. It gauges whether funds allocated to inventory are actively contributing to facility operations or languishing on storeroom shelves. You want to find the optimum amount of inventory to keep on hand that aligns with operational needs.

Supervisors will use historical records of maintenance activities to determine the quantity of stock needed. Just as important will be the minimum amount of stock on hand below which you’d purchase more.

January 07, 2025

Understanding Failure Reporting, Cause, and Corrective Action

All businesses have assets. When one of those assets breaks down or fails, you call in maintenance. However, technicians can’t just repair and move on. For a successful program, you need an analysis of the problem.

This article will explore the acronym FRACAS. This stands for Failure Reporting, Analysis, and Corrective Action System. Basically, this system seeks to identify the failure, the cause, and the solution, or the action taken. Let’s look at each of these in turn.

Identifying the Failure

Whatever the problem, you have to identify it. You can use numerous terms for this. Break down. Stops working. Glitch. Malfunction. Broken part. Defective part. Won’t start.

Develop a set of codes to cover the various types of failures. If you use a quality computerized maintenance management system (CMMS), you’ll have a menu item for this. You’ll use these codes on work orders either as a known factor or for the technician to add to the record.

January 06, 2025

Understanding Asset Management: A Comprehensive Guide

Under the general category of maintenance management, you have several subcategories. In this article, we'll have a better understanding of one of those: asset management. We'll look at the following:

• Defining Asset Management Programs
• The Benefits of a Successful Program
• Developing a Successful Asset Management Policy
• Implementing Your Asset Management Program
• How CMMS Enhances Your Asset Management Program

You'll find assets in every business. From computers to vehicles to buildings/property to industrial equipment. For a business to thrive, these assets must stay at the highest baseline functionality possible.

What does this mean? "Out of the box" assets operate at their peak. Over time, you must conduct maintenance to keep assets at their baseline. This could consist of preventive tasks or repairs.

Of course, all assets age. This means that the baseline lowers. Eventually, maintenance costs outweigh the cost of a new or replacement. At that time, you'll have to decide to invest in something else.

This may take multiple personnel: supervisors, management, planners, production people, and accounting.

December 23, 2024

What Is Downtime Tracking? Understanding Methods and Software

This week, we'll explore the question of what is downtime tracking. As part of achieving management success, you'll want downtime reports. Read on for the financial repercussions of idle machinery. Other areas of interest include:

• What is downtime tracking?
• Benefits of this information.
• How this differs from production downtime.
• Methods of collecting the data.

What is Downtime Tracking?

Consider this a pivotal tool to maximize production efficiency. However, the journey to operational excellence doesn't end with merely collecting data on machine stoppage. It involves a multi-faceted approach.

1. Pinpointing the causes of downtime. You have to understand what happened. What was the failure? Then you need to know why it failed. Human error? Design problem? Worn-out parts?
2. Analyzing the collected data. You may not have much information from many sources. The next step, though, is to collect everything for study.
3. Deploying strategic measures to prevent or minimize future interruptions.

December 10, 2024

Understanding ROA: A Guide to Return on Assets

Do you have a good understanding of ROA (Return on Assets)? We've all heard the term ROI (Return On Investments). However, you can consider ROA a part of the overall ROI. This metric gauges a company's efficiency in utilizing its assets to generate profits.

In this article, we'll look at:

• The Definition of ROA and how it relates to companies.
• The advantages of knowing your ROA.
• Calculating of ROA.
• Industry examples.
• How a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) enhances the measurement.

What is ROA? Understanding Return on Assets

Return On Assets measures a company's profitability by comparing its net income to its total assets. It shows how efficiently a company uses its assets to generate profit. Companies use ROA for various reasons. Let's highlight a few and discuss aspects of each.

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