If your Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) is set up correctly and you’ve been using it to store the information about assets under maintenance control, you can make data-driven decisions. Alternatives to data-driven decisions increase cost and reduce reliability.
For example, let’s say you perform preventative maintenance (PM) activities based on the calendar. You’ve got assets spread all over the plant, and the same equipment might be shut down half a dozen times to cover the associated PMs as they come due. Yet most of these PMs probably are not necessary.
If your CMMS is populated with PM history (including PM test data) and/or with predictive maintenance (PdM) data, you can look at trends and extend schedules to reduce unnecessary work while not missing needed intervention.
Another thing your CMMS can do is show you which PMs are coming due within a certain period. You can see which ones are associated with a given product line, so you shut that line down once to complete all the associated PM tasks. Then you move on to the next production line that may have a cluster of PMs coming due.