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PRINCIPLES OF CMMS IMPLEMENTATION

Conference Paper · November 2018

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 PRINCIPLES OF CMMS IMPLEMENTATION

ABSTRACT
Surveys show that many Computerized Maintenance Management Systems
(CMMS) implementations fail to deliver the projected benefits. Various
reasons are stated, among them: lack of management support, lack of
stakeholder buy-in, insufficient resources, uncoordinated implementation
planning, and so forth. In such cases, a business-as-usual paradigm will
prevail. This is not really a surprising revelation, as many IT implementation
projects do not live up to expectations; add to that the fact that management
frequently views maintenance as a cost of doing business, rather than an
opportunity for operational excellence. In reality, maintenance is an area
where significant savings can be achieved.

This paper discusses the principles of CMMS implementation. A CMMS is an

enabler, not a driver, to maintenance performance. In its most basic form, a
CMMS is a transactional tool for management reporting and accounting. With
management action, it is a strategic and tactical control tool.

A key function which receives little attention is planning and scheduling, and is
the reason why maintenance performance is frequently less than excellent. A
work paradigm shift is needed, and a CMMS is the perfect tool to address this
problem, and should be the focus during implementation.

The most important modules in a CMMS are work management, asset

register, PM, labor and inventory. These modules must be populated with the
appropriate data. Guidelines and samples for creating data sets for each
major module are provided to kick-start an implementation effort. Technical
details of set up and configuration will not be discussed, as these are brand-
specific.

BACKGROUND
REASONS FOR JUSTIFYING CMMS
Various reasons are normally cited when justifying the purchase and
implementation of a CMMS. Some of the common expected benefits include:

• Increase Availability of equipment.

• Reduce downtime
• Reduce emergency work
• Reduce costs
• Reduce spare parts inventory

Essentially, the objectives are to help operations and maintenance ensure

production continuity at optimum costs. Justifying a CMMS financially is not as
easy to define. Proving the value of a CMMS to a company is difficult to put in
numbers, due primarily to the following concept: maintenance is not about
generating profits; maintenance is about avoiding costs. So, qualitative
reasons are relied upon to justify the expenditures for a new or upgraded
CMMS. Perhaps a catastrophic event that resulted in a production loss or
breach of health and environmental issues, attributed to “misinformation”,
could persuade company management to approve the expenditure. In any
case, proposals for capital are usually approved if they can show increased
profits and/or cost savings.

IMPLEMENTATION ‘FAILURES’

Failures of information technology initiatives are not uncommon, and this

applies as well to CMMS, but this is no excuse. What many CMMS
implementations end up being is computerized maintenance transaction
processing. To that extent, the CMMS becomes an accounting tool; it records
work, labor, and perhaps contract transactions. But how can this account for
the justification mentioned previously? Computerizing the maintenance
department is not the objective; the CMMS must be used as an important tool
to manage maintenance functions, formulate strategies and take action.

The current buzzword in information technology circles is alignment of

information technology with business. This means that merely processing
faster and capturing massive amounts of data is no longer acceptable.
Businesses must derive real benefits that impact the bottom line from
information technology.

In virtually any enterprise, there are three resources which must exist in the
conduct of business:

• People: skilled and reliable personnel; organization structure that

nourish coordination and information as well as knowledge exchange.
Who is involved and what contributions must they make?
• Process: procedures, paradigm and work culture that promotes
quality and efficiency, adaptable to dynamically changing conditions and
environments. What activities must be performed?
• Technology: operating equipment (fixed assets) support equipment, IT
infrastructure including hardware/software, etc. What technology must be
in place to support business functions?

The absence or dormant state of any one of these resources will place the
business at a handicap.
In the context of a CMMS, a CMMS (part of Technology) can provide a
significant contribution to an organization’s bottom line if coupled with clear
and efficient Business Processes (Process), skill and discipline (People), and
help achieve business transformation objectives

An important fact to remember is, CMMS’s are not intuitive and can be difficult
to implement. If modules, workflows and data fields are not established
correctly, and data entry not standardized, the implementation effort is
doomed.

CONTRIBUTIONS OF A CMMS
As a tool, a CMMS functions as a data repository and generates reports. By
itself, it is not much good. Combine it with processes and people to enter,
process and act on information, it becomes a powerful tool to manage
maintenance functions:

• Improve work efficiency. Through planning and scheduling of

resources, preparations can be made so that little time is wasted
searching for equipment information and history, compiling the required
materials and tools, and waiting for production to release the
equipment. Travel to and fro job sites is also optimized.
• Increase equipment availability. Better planning and scheduling,
complete information on equipment along with maintenance histories,
no missed jobs such as PM’s will inevitably lead to improvements in
equipment availability.
• Better spare parts control. Materials issued are accountable, as they
are linked to specific equipment through work orders. Specifying Bill of
Materials for critical and major equipment allows prudent parts stocking
strategies (min-max). Review catalog for duplicates permits elimination
or consolidation of parts. Materials reservation functions in the CMMS
ensures that the required parts are available when the work is to begin.

THE CMMS

BASIC MODULES
Each CMMS product will have distinct features and different terms to identify
entities, but the basic functionalities are common to all:
• EQUIPMENT MANAGEMENT, includes equipment details such as
specifications, locations and maintenance history
• WORK MANAGEMENT, includes management of planned and
unplanned work, PM’s, job plans/tasks, resource scheduling and
posting utilization transactions
• PARTS INVENTORY MANAGEMENT, includes reserving, issuing, field
returns, where-used, and reorder information
• PROCUREMENT MANAGEMENT, includes requisitioning, purchase
orders, supplier information, stores receiving and warranty claims
• LABOR/PERSONNEL MANAGEMENT, includes skills classification,
pay rates, training and vacation schedules.
• REPORTING, the main output of the CMMS and its most important
function. Canned (packaged) reports are normally provided, but can
accommodate customized reports.
 Miscellaneous
Non-Stock Materials Req’d
Time Sheet Costs
Entry
Replenishment

Trip CC, Rentals, etc. Procurement

Materials Receipts
Hours Worked Materials Req’d Processing

Work Issues, Adjustments

Management
Payroll Supplier Info
Invoice-Item Matching
Hours & Costs
Receipts Accruals
Material Transactions
Work Costs

Asset Mgmt Vendors

COA
Payroll Costs Invoicing

Chart of Accounts
Invoice Accruals
CMMS Invoices

Vendor Info
Corporate
Financial System GL
Accounts
Asset Payable
Management or
Corporate
Financial System

CMMS Context Diagram

SETUP AND IMPLEMENTATION

ASSESSMENT
When a CMMS is purchased, it must be implemented in such a way that it
becomes an integral part of the maintenance organization. Maintenance
strategies, such as those resulting from Reliability Centered Maintenance
(RCM), Reliability Based Inspections (RBI), if not already established, should
be defined so that equipment criticalities can be assigned. Risk considerations
should be the driving forces behind the maintenance strategy and criticality
ratings. Common maintenance strategies include:

• Run to Failure, usually no impact on production, only economic

concerns
• Preventive Maintenance (PM), periodic component replacement
• Predictive of Condition Based, monitoring heat, vibration, alignment,
wear, debris
• Proactive, monitoring and correction of failing root causes, such as
contamination

Performing a Gap Analysis will define current conditions and to-be conditions.
Besides the usual performance gaps, this should include business processes,
i.e., how work is requested, initiated, approved, performed and completed.
This is essentially a reengineering process.
Metrics & Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). Surprisingly, many
maintenance organizations have very little and inadequate reports. Some only
report the number of work orders received and completed, and equipment
breakdowns per month. With such reports, there is really very little to analyze
and improve on. This makes it difficult to document current conditions for
benchmarking. The following lists some commonly used measures:

• Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF), both at system and component

levels
• Mean Time to Repair (MTTR)
• Pareto reports to list both most frequent failures and most costly work
orders

Established benchmarks are also available, as in the following, from John S.

Mitchell’s “Operating Equipment Asset Management Handbook”, 1st Edition,
Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory, 1999:

Best Practice Benchmarks

Category Benchmark
Yearly Maintenance Costs:
Total Maintenance Cost / Total Manufacturing Cost < 10-15%
Maintenance Cost / Replacement Asset Value of the Plant and < 3%
Equipment
Hourly Maintenance Workers as a % of Total 15%
Planned Maintenance:
Planned Maintenance / Total Maintenance > 90%
Planned and Scheduled Maintenance as a % of Hours Worked ~ 85-95%
Unplanned Down Time ~ 0%
Reactive Maintenance < 10%
Run-to-Fail (Emergency + Non-Emergency) < 10%
Maintenance Overtime:
Maintenance Overtime / Total Company Overtime <5%
Monthly Maintenance Rework:
Work Orders Reworked / Total Work Orders ~ 0%
Inventory Turns:
Turns Ration of Spare Parts > 2-3
 Best Practice Benchmarks
Training:
For at least 90% of workers, hrs. / Year > 40 hrs/yr
Spending on Worker Training (% of Payroll) ~ 4%
Safety Performance:
OSHA Injuries per 200,000 labor hours <2
Housekeeping ~ 96%
Monthly Maintenance Strategies:
PM: Total Hours PM/Total Maintenance Hours Available ~ 20%
PDM/CBM: Total Hours PDM/Total Maintenance Hours Available ~ 50%
PRM (planned reactive): Total Hours PRM/Total Maintenance Hours ~ 20%
Available
REM (reactive, emergency): Total Hours REM/Total Maintenance ~ 2%
Hours Available
RNEM (non-emergency): Total Hours RNEM/Total Maintenance ~ 8%
Hours Available
Plant Availability:
Available Time / Maximum Available Time > 97%
Contractors:
Contractors Cost / Total Maintenance Cost 35-64%

Benchmarks based on John S. Mitchell’s “Operating Equipment Asset Management

Handbook”,1st Edition, PennState’s Applied Research Laboratory, 1999

Because a CMMS is a tool in the performance of maintenance activities, it is

fitting to measure the base indicators of maintenance functions and
performance. Note that in the above benchmark, planning and scheduling
rank highly.

PLANNING
This is the most important part of any implementation. The tasks and
resources are influenced by the CMMS product selected. Without detailed
plans, the outcome is left to chance.

• TASKS, detailed description of the work that must be performed,

including deliverables
• RESOURCES, required manpower and facilities, including
responsibilities
• SCHEDULE, start and end dates of each task
• CHANGE MANAGEMENT, any implementation requires socialization
and a concerted effort to incorporate the new/revised system into the
business. It sends a signal that management intends to improve
current work practices.

Typical times to implement, depending on size of maintenance organization,

range from 1 month to over 1 year.

BASIC CONFIGURATION
PLANT STRUCTURE

Classify each equipment and build hierarchies. Example of classification:

compressor, pump, turbine, fan, engine, etc. If possible, include sub-
class/type: axial, rotary, centrifugal, reciprocating, etc.
EQUIPMENT HIERARCHY
Build the Equipment Hierarchy, down to level where maintenance strategy is
applied, e.g. Motor, Gear, and items for which tracking is mandated
(warranties, movements, capital items, etc.). Any component below
the lowest level are considered as parts

EQUIPMENT HIERARCHY

FIELD/AREA

PROCESS 1 PROCESS 2 PROCESS 3

EQUIP 1 EQUIP 2 EQUIP 3 EQUIP 4

PUMP GEARBOX MOTOR

BILL OF
MATERIALS

EQUIPMENT CRITICALITY
Assign Equipment Criticality to each equipment at each level, from functional
system level to the individual lower levels. This is most appropriately defined
by production department, and can be simple or elaborate. Following is a
sample set of equipment criticality codes:

Criticality Description
4 Safety concerns
3 Environmental issues
2 Production loss or slow down
1 Economic impact
WORK PRIORITY
Work priority, defined by maintenance department; can be simple as in the
following sample, or elaborate.

Priority Description
4 Health. Safety and Environmental concerns
3 Production Loss emergencies
2 Preventive Maintenance (PM)
1 Non-emergency work

FAILURE CODES
Define Failure codes by categorizing problem, cause and remedy.
Standardize the list, but try to keep it simple and intuitive. The company may
be in possession of particular standard codes such as ISO or British
Standards (BSI). During work order completion, these codes must be filled in.
The codes are used for failure analyses and statistics. There should be no
choices like “OTHER”, as such choices have a tendency to proliferate and
render any analysis meaningless. If a PM is performed, codes can be
designated as “PM”.

USERS
Categories of users are defined to signify the roles of the various functions.
Certain groups can create work orders, others can approve work orders, and
so forth. Different access rights and permissions are assigned to each group.
Depending on the number and type of software license in effect, different
persons can share a common account, but whenever possible, assign an
account to each person. This will aid in tracking transactions.

WORKFLOW
This is basically a work order or request routing facility. Persons can approve
or reject work requests, usually defined by expenditure limits. The underlying
premise is that projected costs are either known or can be estimated.

REPORTS
As defined in the assessment stage, reports are used to measure
maintenance performance and results of maintenance activities. Reports
should be defined early in the implementation stage, as they define the data
needed to be stored in the CMMS.

INTERFACES
If the implementation calls for it, interfaces are developed to link the CMMS to
other corporate systems, such as project management, accounting, finance,
payroll, inventory, procurement, human resources. Some CMMS products
offer Application Program Interface (API) which aid in the interface
development, others require custom programming to link to other corporate
systems.

CUSTOMIZATION
No CMMS can fully accommodate all the requirements. The key is to keep
any customization, if absolutely necessary, to a minimum. Customizations
consume resources, require extra effort, may be bug-ridden, and can wreak
havoc when upgrading the CMMS, operating system, or interfaced systems. If
it cannot be avoided, reengineer existing practices; do not be entrapped by
the “can’t do it here, we have a unique process” mentality; this is a major
contributor to implementation failures. The CMMS industry has matured
enough to accommodate most business process requirements.

SYSTEM SECURITY
As with any system, the security from intruders as well as backups must be
controlled and managed. The assigned system administrator is responsible
for this.

POPULATE THE DATABASE

DATA GATHERING, COMPILATION AND CLEANUP

Prior to populating the database, it is good policy to review, cleanup and

validate the data. This is a time consuming and resource hungry effort, but it
will be worth the effort, and there may be no other opportunity to do so.

• Codes: classification, noun descriptors, hierarchies, locations, failure

codes, etc.
• Equipment specifications: equipment ID’s, Tags, serial numbers,
criticality, Bill of Materials. Normally obtained from PFD, P&ID,
nameplates, field collection and other sources of information. For large
 and complex plants, it may be necessary to prioritize the data entry
based on the criticality ranking of the equipment.
• Stores and inventory items, part numbers, descriptions, classifications,
specifications, locations/bin numbers, on-hand, on-order, reserved,
min-max, manufacturer, suppliers, lead-times, costs, stock/non-stock
• PM and PdM, tasks, resources, schedules, Lockout/Tagout (LOTO),
safety instructions
• Personnel, rates and skills information
• Auxiliary data, such as contractors, vendors, suppliers, engineering
drawings, other attachments
• Chart of accounts, for posting costs
• Equipment – parts links (where-used)

Collect, structure, standardize and enter no more data than necessary. Refer
to reports, metrics, Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s), material ordering
information, equipment identification, reliability and failure analyses.

TRAINING
CMMS’s are not intuitive, and training to utilize the CMMS must be conducted.
Vendor trainers must be actively involved initially to show how it is supposed
to be used. Programmers are not considered CMMS trainers.
A dedicated core implementation team is formed for the CMMS
implementation, and the team assumes trainer roles after going live. Training
must be conducted periodically to accommodate new users, and as refresher
training.

SYSTEM TESTING
Thorough tests of the system is performed by the users: core team, planners,
engineers, supervisors, clerks, and other selected functions. CMMS vendor
representatives must be present.. Any defects, bugs, or otherwise non-
conformance to system specifications are documented and resolved before
the system is declared fit for use.

DEPLOYMENT
This is the stage at which the CMMS goes “live” and is officially declared an
integral part of conducting daily business. Some implementations ease
gradually by deploying partially or applying the CMMS to selected functional
areas within the operations and maintenance areas, others may opt to
completely switch over to the new or upgraded CMMS. There may be
unforeseen problems or bumps, but the implementation core team should be
on hand to document and address the problems.
Business processes should conform to overall system, and functional entities
should perform as planned. Ensure that all data is entered and processed
correctly, and monitor utilization of the CMMS closely. Generate reports to
ensure that the CMMS is functioning as expected.
Planning, scheduling, execution and completion of work orders should contain
all the required data, such as time, labor, failure codes, materials, tools, and
comments. Make sure that the data is validated and correct.

Performance Work Work Work

Requirements Identification Planning Scheduling

Continuous Sustained
Improvements Maintenance

Work Work
Analyses
Follow-Up Execution

Maintenance Business Process

CLOSING THOUGHTS
Many plants operate in a reactive mode. A simple indicator of this is when
more than 50% of their maintenance workforce time is spent on failures. Such
plants may already perform planning and scheduling, but usually limited to
PM’s; inefficiencies are bound to exist, evidenced by the reactive nature. In
other words, this means that 50% or more of maintenance activities are
unplanned and unscheduled.
Raising the level of maintenance excellence requires that all work is planned
and scheduled, except perhaps leaving about 5% allowance for emergency
work. All manhours are ideally accounted for, including vacations, training,
meetings, preparation and travel. Use the CMMS to monitor and control
maintenance functions.

When generating reports for benchmarking, target figures must be established

to measure performance. Performance targets help to define functional areas
that need improvement. The absence of defined targets indicates that the
maintenance organization is not proactive, and any existing CMMS is used
purely for transactional purposes, i.e. an administrative tool.

There are no short cuts when implementing a CMMS. A full effort is required;
half-hearted attempts will not do.
Utilize the CMMS as it was designed to be used, and use it for both as a
transactional tool (accounting purposes) and a control tool (strategic/tactical
purposes).

The power of a CMMS is in the information and what you do with the
information it contains. Unlocking the data for analyses enhances decision
making and point the way to focus areas for maintenance improvements.
 Biography
Rachmar Senduk is a senior consultant at PT Centrasolusi Intiselaras,
specializing in CMMS and enterprise asset management systems. His
experiences are mostly in the oil and gas industry, where he developed
production, reserves and hydrocarbon depletion planning systems, and for the
last 15 years focusing on maintenance management systems. He holds a
Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering from San Francisco State
University and a Master of Science degree in Information Technology from
Swiss German University in Indonesia.

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