Improve inventory management thanks to a CMMS software

Mobility Work
29/11/2018
9
min
Inventory management software in a CMMS

Inventory management software: how to use a CMMS?

Inventory management is an essential component of the smooth running of a business since it ensures continuous improvement in productivity. Poor management can in fact lead to production stoppages and therefore cause financial losses.. Factories have no choice but to maintain a meticulous inventory of incoming and outgoing spare parts to fulfill their goals, which is a lot easy with inventory management software.

Very often, teams are forced to track this data directly from their ERP but then encounter certain difficulties since the software is rather archaic and not very intuitive. In addition, since inventory management is considered to fall within the field of business cost accounting, the data is not easily accessible to everyone.

However, it is essential that the teams working in the factory are aware of stock levels., and in particular those composed of external service providers or maintenance technicians. They in fact intervene on the equipment and must be kept informed since they are at the origin of requests for intervention, declarations of breakdowns or malfunctions...

CMMS: an essential asset for industrial maintenance teams

To ensure the efficiency of maintenance technicians, teams must be equipped with inventory management software.. Thanks to this tool, everyone can fill in the information they deem useful, for example: report breakdowns, communicate on an operation carried out, keep colleagues informed of the progress of a repair, create equipment sheets to access a history of interventions, add photos, technical documents or others, add photos, technical documents or others, have a calendar allowing them to plan their tasks and respect deadlines...

At a time of transition to the industry of the future, where factories have everything to gain from adopting innovative digital tools, next-generation maintenance software is accessible directly on technicians' smartphones. Technology enters directly into the heart of the industrial world to simplify working methods and provide concrete solutions.

Thanks to these new generation tools, like CMMS, teams communicate better and completely annihilate the loss of information. Each maintenance technician becomes a real player and fills in his inventory management software to keep his colleagues informed of repairs, malfunctions and breakdowns in progress.

Such tools can even integrate a Instant chat function, thanks to which teams communicate with each other as soon as they feel the need. Thus, when a maintenance manager needs to pass certain instructions to a technician, he does not need to cross the entire factory to find him, nor to look for his telephone number or to return to the office to send his instructions: he can communicate directly with him in the maintenance solution or insert his comments and tag users in the application, who will be notified thanks to a notification system.

Why combine inventory management software and CMMS?

Inventory management software, while certainly very comprehensive, is a fairly archaic and dense tool that is ultimately not very accessible to field teams. Inventory management is carried out in the ERP to track the entries and exits of spare parts, for example. This data is particularly relevant for industrial maintenance teams who, for example, observe equipment malfunctions and order parts to replace faulty ones.

If technicians know the status of the stock, they know whether or not they need to order parts. It is crucial to guarantee access to information for industrial maintenance teams in order to avoid unnecessary expenses as much as possible..

New generation CMMS are mobile tools accessible anywhere in the factory that have intuitive interfaces that are in line with current digital needs. Connect your ERP to your maintenance management software makes it possible to make information accessible to the teams working in the factory.

At the same time, the possibility of connecting these tools makes it possible to increase their strength and streamline communication between the various departments. Indeed, technicians can communicate better with the Purchasing Department since they have access to certain information and, to use the example of stock levels, they no longer have to make unnecessary requests and gain autonomy.

Connecting your inventory management software to your CMMS also avoids double entries since the technician checks directly from his smartphone that the information already exists and no longer wastes time filling in his application: everything becomes much more accessible.

An example of a successful connection between ERP and CMMS

Companies are becoming more and more aware of the importance of informing the various field teams about the life of their factory to facilitate their daily tasks and support them with innovative tools.

La Mobility Work next-gen CMMS is one of those tools from the industry of the future that offer innovative solutions to provide concrete answers to the needs of the field.

Un logiciel mobile de gestion des stocks

All the news relating to current interventions are available from the news feed of the Mobility Work mobile application, available on iOS and Android

Mobility Work goes beyond all the possibilities presented above since this application available in SaaS (Software as a Service) compiles both maintenance management software, a marketplace and a community tool, built on the model of the applications that we all use on a daily basis. The solution is much more than a CMMS: it is also a real social maintenance network, where users have the opportunity to exchange best practices and share the information they want. Many customers have already chosen to connect their ERP to the solution.

How do I connect inventory management software to a CMMS?

In your ERP, each part has its own article code that will be copied when the files are extracted, which allows you to quickly identify it. Simply extract all the information from your ERP using the .csv file automatically provided by Mobility Work. You must then scrupulously respect the fields containing the location, the stock value, the unit price or the description of the spare part.

Thanks to this file, the parts are connected to the inventory management software. and users can choose the frequency of updating information: every ten minutes, every hour, every day... The ERP, for its part, updates certain information every hour: the location of the parts, the quantity, the price, etc. directly in the management software of

Thanks to this feature, the technician accesses all the information he may need directly on his smartphone and benefits from simplified access through the intuitive interface of his maintenance solution. The ergonomics are optimized so that handling, consultation and reading are facilitated.

As a result, the construction of schedules is often complicated and tedious. Thanks to new generation maintenance management software such as Mobility Work, the process is completely automated. Concretely, each spare part released on a task is linked to the equipment sheet associated with it. Therefore, the more spare parts technicians release, the more they keep the bills of materials alive.

Maintain or invest?

Beyond optimized inventory management, the benefits of the connection between inventory management software and CMMS are numerous. For example, it makes it possible to know whether a company should instead make the choice to maintain a machine or to invest in new equipment. Indeed, the objective is to recover all the costs associated with industrial maintenance operations (labor, orders, spare parts, etc.) in order to take stock of them.

To use Mobility Work as an example, Once the ERP is connected, all the data is copied and presented in the form of tables and graphs in the analytics tool accessible directly in the application. Thanks to this feature, users can access the analysis of their spare parts consumption and other industrial maintenance data in a few clicks.

Outil danalyse dans un logiciel de gestion des stocks de pièces détachées

The forecasts of the Mobility Work application analytics tool are based on data collected from thousands of users working on the same equipment.

This tool has many advantages since it allows maintenance managers to see the frequency of breakdowns and unplanned machine shutdowns, which allows them to to adapt their industrial maintenance strategy. It is time for digitalization and factories are not spared: thanks to such easy-to-use tools that allow industrial maintenance to be considered from a new angle and to redefine certain codes, field technicians become actors in their days and have a real impact on the productivity of their company. They are equipped with next-generation inventory management solutions that place them at the heart of all activity to make them real contributors.

Are you interested in maintenance management and want to know more in order to increase your productivity and save money?

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