Your maintenance operation is the core of your property.
It shapes how your customers perceive your effectiveness.
Do they see broken furniture?
Does the power always go out in areas of your property?
Are the property’s employees always contacting your team because defective equipment is hindering their workday?
Or, is everything running smoothly and looking good?
Your ability to achieve the latter is necessary.
But, how is it affecting your bottom line?
Are you spending so much money to fix and maintain equipment that you’re losing money?
You need to employ preventive maintenance software if that’s the case.
A strategy that includes maintenance software with a preventive aspect helps you maximize where your resources are going.
Today, we’re going to explain what you need to do, because it doesn’t stop at implementing the system.
There’s more work to do.
Are you ready?
Planning, as simple as it might seem, is often a missed practice when managing maintenance.
Some managers still conduct maintenance activities in a way that is necessary – even with the associated costs.
Do you wait for the next piece of equipment to break before using resources to fix it?
You need to reduce your operational and equipment downtime.
You also need to reduce your costs associated with completing activities and preventive maintenance tasks.
You can help your team persevere.
But you need discipline.
Here are seven steps for getting a reduction in costs for every area of your operation:
Are you currently taking this approach to managing your maintenance?
Now is the time to use preventive methods to get the best results for your profit center.
Eliminate inefficiency to move closer to your goal.
You want resources allocated to the appropriate activities, at the right time, and for the right amount.
The downtime of your equipment requires more attention from your workforce, so reduce that too.
The more often you need to send staff to fix faulty or broken equipment, the more your resources are being overutilized.
The more money saved, the closer you get to be a profit center.
Which do you choose?
Executing a plan is imperative.
Efficiency in your maintenance operation will lead to more profits.
More money leads to longevity for your organization.
Use your software to accomplish the goal of remaining or becoming a profit center.
Do this by executing your plan with an automated solution.
It used to be that we would often hear of facilities that would wait for their equipment to fail.
It’s less likely we hear it these days, but that’s because facility managers are finding ways to prevent these drawbacks before they occur.
Preventive maintenance software is one way we can counteract the mishaps associated with a reduced workforce, poor management, overutilized equipment, and overworked facility managers.
Consider what might be currently occurring without planning in place.
Your facility is a living breathing organism consisting of engineers, technicians, vendors, materials, and equipment that often requires your team’s attention.
More than likely, you need to maintain proper safety standards to stay compliant to keep you from losing your job.
Does that sound like a lot of stress and responsibility on your plate?
Well, it is. If you don’t have a solution or game plan in place, it’s a good time to start looking into one.
If you have an overturning workforce, resources being allocated to the wrong areas of your business and more responsibilities piling on your desk, the chance of you becoming more efficient moves down the list.
You need to change this.
Efficiency is what gets you to where you need to be.
It needs to be high on your priority list.
Identifying, prioritizing, and completing your maintenance activities as efficiently as you can be done with web-based software.
It removes the questions, gives you the answers, and helps you know what needs to be tracked and maintained, and the frequency at which it needs to be.
Lead your organization to efficient equipment usage, improved material and workforce allocation, and less operational downtime.
Be a profit-centered maintenance department.
Executing your simple plan using your preventative maintenance solution will result in the efficiency required to accomplish this.
Here’s how to do it.
A valuable system will give you the ability to organize and manage your preventive maintenance activities centrally.
The details of your maintenance can be recorded, tracked, and maintained from a single place.
Imagine being able to manage your maintenance with ease from one activity detail.
Work to be done and all tasks, materials, labor, and equipment needed – in one place.
Easy for you to access and simple to understand.
That’s the key to your efficiency.
Can you see it yet?
Less time is being spent on the computer, and more time is being spent in the field getting your work completed.
Now you can easily create schedules and view them in a calendar format.
Some systems even allow you to manage your scheduled maintenance in the calendar format.
Add activities to the specific date and make changes as needed.
It makes understanding what’s being done and when a whole lot easier for you.
It’s a bird’s-eye view.
The stress of allocating staff to the right place, identifying what equipment always fails, “Do I have enough materials and equipment available?”
“Are my employees conducting inspections and completing work as expected?” can finally subside.
Maintaining this requires you to do an in-depth analysis and dive deep into your numbers while getting everyone on board with your vision.
Not only are you working towards profits for the organization, but you're also changing the facility maintenance culture.
Everyone needs to acclimate and accept the changes you’re working towards at your facility.
We understand change is a hard fact that facility managers work to avoid.
This article gives you valuable tips on how you can get over it and start being successful on your terms.
It may take some time to get everyone up to par.
The purpose is to create the plan, get your people up to speed, and execute using your solution.
After that, focus on measuring and improving every aspect of a fully optimized profit center.
For the highest level of performance, you will want to use the reporting features available in your solution to measure elements that have the most impact on your facility.
Summary reports will allow you to track multiple facilities, the status of all your activities, and associated tasks.
See a detailed look at the frequency of maintenance tasks and how you can improve the utilization of equipment for increased quality of production and a reduction in inspections.
Preventive maintenance software is a valuable solution for managing your costs and turning them into profits.
The data you produce over the long term provides your facility with the principal performance indicators to improve, and then maximize, all areas of your maintenance.
So, are you ready to maximize your profits?
Editor's note: This post was originally published in July 2017 and has been updated for comprehensiveness and freshness.