What is maintenance management software?

Maintenance management software is a tool to track the condition of the tools, assets, fleets, equipment, and machines installed at premises. The status of these items gives relevant insights to the maintenance teams. 

The software includes tools to schedule maintenance, set priorities, assign tickets to engineers, and generate maintenance reports. It helps businesses streamline their overall maintenance process, track machine health, and reduce breakdowns, which in turn, improves operating efficiency and saves time and money.

The benefits of maintenance management software

It’s no secret that poor maintenance can lead to sudden machine breakdown, which can halt the entire production cycle. Breakdowns are costly for businesses and risky for workers operating the machines because you can’t accurately predict the fault and extent of damage on those. 

This is where maintenance management software can help you. It offers the following benefits:

• Extends the life of machinery: The core job of this software is to define the maintenance requirements of individual assets and set recurring maintenance schedules. Timely service and proper maintenance extend the life and quality of the machines, which then run for a longer duration without (or minimal) breakdown.
• Maintains a safe and compliant workplace: The software helps businesses establish health and safety checks, which can be communicated across the work floor to reduce the number of incidents. It also captures maintenance and incident records as per the compliance requirements to audit and create reports about the maintenance team and the whole business unit.
• Establishes a preventive maintenance approach: Maintenance management software can create triggers for maintenance. It uses real-time monitoring sensors to track system health and set a preventive course post breakdown to bring the system back online as quickly as possible.

Typical features of maintenance management software

• Asset tracking: Keeps track of all the assets, including tools, equipment, and machine parts. It monitors the usage, allocation, movement, and returns throughout the asset’s life cycle.
• Preventive maintenance: Helps you perform regular maintenance of machines and equipment to prevent downtime and expensive repair costs.
• Work order management: Creates work orders for maintenance requests, assigns them to maintenance teams, and tracks the status until completion.
• Scheduling: Lets you plan and schedule maintenance operations as well as communicate the schedule to the concerned stakeholders.
• Inventory management: Helps you supervise the flow of assets, replacement parts, and equipment across the work floor and keep a tab on the stock quantity.
• Mobile access: Allows you to send, receive, and access maintenance schedules on mobile phones. The software also lets you update the job progress, submit proof of work, and communicate with the maintenance team.

Considerations when purchasing maintenance management software

• Type of facility: Maintenance software can be used in various industries, even schools and hospitals. Industry-specific maintenance software provides you prebuilt templates and customized interfaces, which helps users quickly adapt to the software. Generic maintenance software may not offer all the features you need.
• Deployment options: Maintenance management software could be deployed on-premise or in the cloud. The cloud option is cheaper but your data is hosted on the vendor’s or a third-party server. However, if you aren’t comfortable storing your records with a third-party, you may be better of with an on-premise solution.
• Hidden charges: Most maintenance software plans are offered as subscriptions, but not every vendor may be forthright about additional costs for training, support, or upgrades. We recommend asking your shortlisted vendors about all such charges or fees, so that you can accurately calculate the software’s total cost of ownership. Avoid any surprises as these will affect your budget and potentially, increase your losses.

Relevant maintenance management software trends

• Mobile accessibility will increase efficiency: Mobile accessibility isn’t new to the maintenance market. The trend offers benefits such as streamlined communication and faster request processing. Many vendors, such as eXpress , UpKeep , and Fiix , are offering dedicated mobile apps or mobile accessibility in their core maintenance software. It increases the efficiency of technicians and helps them progress to the next request instead of having to run back and forth to the office.
• AI to power applications: The new maintenance management solutions aren’t just about creating maintenance orders, assigning, and closing them. To improve the software’s performance, vendors are adding artificial intelligence (AI) to collect and analyze maintenance records, reasons for breakdowns, and preventive measures taken. The system analyzes all this data to offer recommendations on prioritizing maintenance schedules as well as finding the exact cause for repetitive breakdowns.