How to manage your maintenance teams using CMMS?

The Covid-19 epidemic and the lockdown measures taken to contain it have deeply disrupted the organization of factories, for a period of time still unknown. In this context, the maintenance of machines and equipment must be redesigned, and the GMAO is becoming all the more indispensable.

Indeed, computer-assisted maintenance management is even more useful when it comes to promoting teleworking and manage maintenance teams often in reduced numbers, while aiming at rapidly relaunching factory activity.

Use a CMMS software efficient and adapted to the situation allows maintenance managers to optimize team management, to best organize the maintenance schedule, and to ensure maximum efficiency for each intervention.

The health crisis, a challenge for maintenance managers

The current health situation and lockdown represent major challenges for managers in general, and for maintenance managers in particular.

Management of maintenance teams in the time of Covid-19

The good relationship between a maintenance manager and his teams is largely based on trust. Technicians need to have confidence in their manager's ability to organize interventions so that these go well and are effective. For his part, the maintenance manager must have trust in its teams and in their ability to carry out precise, serious and rapid work.

In times of health crisis and social distance, this trust can be undermined or more difficult to build and maintain. In fact, the teleworking is favored, some of the employees are on partial unemployment and the number of technicians present in the field is reduced to a minimum.

CMMS, a valuable tool for good communication within maintenance teams

In this context, have a CMMS platform integrating community functioning is a real asset. This is the case of the Mobility Work application, which has a space for exchanges and communication between its various users. Inspired by social networks, the application offers, for example, a simplified news feed. This allows all stakeholders to monitor maintenance operations and to obtain information in real time.

Follow the news from your network

In addition, the Mobility Work tool offers users the possibility of interacting with each other, which reinforces the cohesion of teams that do not necessarily work in the same place on a daily basis.

Improve internal communication in the company thanks to a collaborative CMMS platform

More generally, have a collaborative CMMS platform makes it possible to improve communication not only within the maintenance department, in order to avoid repair delays or the successive replacements of the same part, but also with the other departments of the company (purchasing, production, etc.). The factors that cause incidents, which are often linked to a lack of communication (difficulty in collaborating or obtaining validations), are thus greatly reduced.

Thanks to Mobility Work, information is centralized in a tool common to all employees involved in maintenance, and easily accessible for all. This sharing of information includes the possibility of monitoring spare parts directly in the tool: maintenance teams thus have knowledge of all the information they need, which avoids Purchasing department to place unnecessary orders.

CMMS and health crisis

Beyond the human aspect of managing maintenance teams, the health crisis is subjecting maintenance managers to considerable logistical and organizational challenges. Their ability to plan maintenance interventions rigorously and effectively is thus put to the test.

The importance of effective intervention planning

When maintenance teams operate with fewer staff, the intervention planning is even more important than usual. These must in fact be carried out at the best time to disrupt production as little as possible, and as quickly as possible, all by a limited number of technicians.

Thanks to a CMMS application such as Mobility Work, task planning is much easier. On PC, the “Planner” tool, which is only accessible to administrator profiles, makes it possible to visualize the intervention schedule of all maintenance technicians and to move tasks by a simple “click and drag”. It is therefore very easy to plan all interventions effectively.

Manage the schedule of your teams in your mobile CMMS

In addition, a CMMS calendar allows, both on a PC and on a smartphone or tablet, to have an overview of tasks already carried out, those that are late, scheduled interventions, etc. It is even possible to consult the calendar of a particular equipment.

CMMS at the service of predictive maintenance

La predictive maintenance (also called predictive maintenance) makes it possible to gain in reliability and to monitor the performance of the machines as accurately as possible. Problems are thus detected before they even appear, which allows them to be resolved very quickly. Maintenance teams can in fact carry out repairs and replacements even before breakdowns occur or cause serious or costly production problems.

In the context of the end of lockdown, when many factories will seek to quickly resume intense production rhythms, predictive maintenance will be a major tool. In fact, it makes it possible to maintain a high level of productivity by reducing machine downtime to a minimum.

Thanks to its advanced functions in terms of planning and analyzing interventions, and to its community operation, which allows you to benefit from a large amount of feedback on a given machine, the Mobility Work application can be a considerable asset for maintenance managers looking for maximum efficiency.

The advantages of mobile CMMS in times of lockdown

Teleworking has been strongly encouraged by the authorities to fight against the coronavirus epidemic, and will be encouraged again in the coming months. Reducing the frequency of physical contact between teams is thus becoming a public health issue.

In this context, have a mobile CMMS tool is particularly useful. With a solution like Mobility Work, maintenance managers can thus consult at any time and from any mobile device all the interventions carried out and planned. They can also manage their teams remotely and monitor their interventions in real time. The analysis of activity reports is also facilitated, and made possible even when working from home.

For their part, maintenance technicians can, using a simple smartphone, consult the tasks incumbent on them at any time and write intervention reports as soon as they are completed.

Far from being the end of a parenthesis, the end of lockdown undoubtedly represents the beginning of a longer period of particular constraints for the productive organization of factories. Maintenance managers and their teams must adapt to new health rules while guaranteeing the optimal productivity of their equipment.