Better assess the maintainability of its equipment thanks to a CMMS

Measuring the maintainability of machines and equipment is essential for effective and efficient maintenance management. While the methods for evaluating it are well known to maintainers, the difficulty of evaluating it often lies in the absence of reliable and easily exploitable data.

In this sense, choosing a CMMS that teams will really use on a daily basis is important so that the measurement of maintainability is based on correct data.

What is maintainability?

Under given conditions, Maintainability is the ability of an asset to be maintained or restored to a condition where it can perform a required function, when maintenance is carried out under given conditions, using prescribed procedures and means.

The maintainability of an equipment or a machine is therefore its “ability” to be quickly repaired. It is also the probability of restoring a system to specified operating conditions, within desired time limits, when maintenance is performed under given conditions, using prescribed procedures and means.

“The prescribed means” encompass very diverse concepts: personnel resources, equipment, tools, etc.

The different levels of maintainability

Based on these definitions, a distinction is made between:

• intrinsic maintainability: it is “built” from the design phase based on specifications taking into account maintainability criteria (modularity, accessibility, etc.).
• predictive maintainability: it is also “built”, but based on the availability objective.
• operational maintainability: it will be measured based on the history of interventions.

What does maintainability depend on?

The maintainability of equipment depends on:

• The detectability (facilitating localization and diagnosis);
• The demountability (accessibility, standardization of tools,...);
• Theinterchangeability (between modules);
• The standardizing (equipment and components, techniques, tools, suppliers,...);
• The quality of documentation.

Equipment factorsManufacturer factorsMaintenance factors

• usability
• documenting
• ability to dismantle

• designing
• ease of obtaining spare parts
• cost of spare parts
• quality of after-sales service

• staff preparation and training
• resources made available
• improvement studies

Maintainability is one of the components of availability of equipment.

Why measure maintainability?

Understanding and reading the data created through the use of failure metrics (MTBF, MTTR, MTTF) helps maintenance professionals in the continuous improvement of their maintenance programs and practices.

Based on this data, they can develop better asset management strategies and improve their overall maintenance processes to avoid failures and damage caused by machine failures.

How do you measure maintainability?

The main indicator of maintainability is the MTTR : Mean Time To Repair, or average repair time. It refers to the time required to repair a property and restore it to all its functionalities.

The MTTR starts at the start of the repair and continues until the repair is complete. It includes repair time, test period, and return to normal working condition.

To calculate the MTTR, you need Divide the total maintenance time by the total number of maintenance actions in a given period.

The advantages of a CMMS

The use of a good CMMS makes it possible to collect the reliable and complete data without which it is impossible to effectively measure the maintainability of equipment and to make decisions that will help improve the productivity of the machine park.

To properly manage maintenance, it is therefore recommended to choose a CMMS that will actually be used on a daily basis by all technicians, so that all the data necessary to measure maintainability are available.

In addition, the chosen CMMS solution should make it possible to:easily export this data to the tools used for the calculation, such as Excel or BI.

In this way, maintenance managers can measure the maintainability of each piece of equipment and implement relevant improvements in maintenance procedures or, if necessary, decide to replace the machines.

Improving the ease of obtaining spare parts thanks to a community CMMS

As we saw above, being able to easily obtain all types of spare parts makes it possible to improve the maintainability of a machine. In this sense, have industrial supplier catalogs directly in its CMMS represents a definite advantage.