Maintenance operations are an integral part of any industry.

Whether it is maintaining equipment like IoT devices or buildings and other infrastructure, an effective maintenance team coordinated by a highly-qualified maintenance coordinator is crucial for the sustainable progress of the company.  

A typical maintenance coordinator job description includes:

• Overseeing ad documenting all tasks
• Logging the activities of all assets and machinery
• Working constantly to upkeep the assets
• Keeping tabs and tracking inventory
• Develop maintenance plans
• Enforce safety and quality control protocols
• Supervise in-house and third-party repair teams

This list of tasks is just the tip of the iceberg of what a maintenance coordinator usually does on a daily basis.

Given such an expansive job description, it is crucial to adopt and or come up with innovative solutions that make maintenance operations easier and the workflow smoother.  

Below are seven ways how you can leverage the innovative and game-changing features of a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) to simplify your maintenance operations.

1. Track Assets

Tracking your assets is vital in your maintenance plans. It provides insightful data to strategically get the most out of your assets and equipment by improving efficiency and reducing overall operational costs.

Through asset tracking using SaaS tools like Limble CMMS, you can seamlessly carry out tasks like:

• Maintenance management
• Purchasing and replacing assets
• Auditing
• Verification and scanning

Thanks to the internet and industrial IoT devices, asset tracking has become efficient, fast, and also inexpensive.  

Although affordable, depending on the size of the company and the number of assets, it can get very expensive and even highly redundant to track every asset.

Hence, tracking and keeping tabs on only the most important and highly valued ones is a good idea.

Also Read: 7 Reasons Why Your Business Isn’t Future Proof Without GPS Fleet Tracking

2. Automate Reporting

Reporting is critical in an organization. You may be able to eliminate a large fraction of the paperwork, but eliminating reporting is a big NO.

Filing reports keep all the members of the company, starting from the maintenance team members to the board of directors, informed about everything that is going on.  

That said, it is no secret that making reports is a big hassle for maintenance managers because of their busy schedules. They have to dig into the past to file an insightful report.

Therefore, using a CMMS tool like Limble is advisable for most Maintenance Managers.

With custom dashboards and insightful data available at your fingertips, you can file your reports by automating whatever you need to include in them and quickly print them out. This will save you a lot of time.

3. Parts And Inventory Management On The Fly

Single-handedly managing thousands of parts and a humongous inventory is like a nightmare come true. That is why the best way to simplify the process is by going digital.  

Getting an inventory management tool will save the monumental work of documenting part names, numbers, quantity, supplier, price, and more that you cannot even access when you are away from your workspace.

A digital inventory management tool will help you keep all the information on your parts and inventory on a single platform.  

Moreover, you can even set up custom notification and alerts for various actions like stocking up when part quantity is low.

4. Track Maintenance Work

A facilities maintenance manager job description in a large company may include being in charge of not just one, but multiple facilities simultaneously at completely different locations.

With so much workload, a large fraction of the work hours could be spent on manually delegating tasks to people and keeping tabs on them, without actually bringing in quantifiable value to the company.  

Therefore, using CMMS software is the right call for busy Maintenance Managers. A CMMS software allows you to automate menial tasks, giving you the upper hand to work on what matters most in your profession.

Keeping track of your subordinates and staying in constant communication with them is hassle-free with a mobile or desktop application.

5. Eliminate Paperwork

When working in an organization, especially large ones, there can be mountains of paperwork for maintenance managers, which only throws them off-schedule.  

Typically, what managers and other company executives do is hire more people to manage the paperwork. Unfortunately, there is more to lose than gain for the company in doing so.

Some of the downsides to this are:

• Increased operational costs
• A larger scope of human error
• Decreased overall efficiency

Hence, the best way to manage paperwork, in this day and age, is to get rid of it. That is where SaaS tools like CMMS come into the picture. They help you organize, record and automate most, if not all, of your paperwork.

6. Analyze Expenditure And Reduce Operational Costs

Reducing operational costs is just as important as generating revenue. Through careful analysis of the expenses of the company on assets, maintenance managers can come up with innovative solutions to reduce costs.  

In an effort to make the most of every asset (usually tangible assets like machinery and other equipment), maintenance managers might get caught in the trap of “overusing” the assets.

Under such circumstances, they end up using the assets that cost more to operate than the value they give.  

Asset management tools that come with CMMS software is the ideal solution to solve this problem. These tools help you easily monitor and manage thousands of assets on the go!

The noteworthy features include:

• The ability to track the health of assets with respect to time
• Monitor complete maintenance logs
• Real-time reporting
• Easy asset organization
• Get live asset data with the help of connected sensors

7. Go Portable, Go Mobile

While talking about simplifying tasks, nothing beats the convenience that our smartphones give us. A mobile CMMS with a user-friendly interface keeps work anxiety locked up at home.

No matter where you are, you can connect your smartphone to the internet and work remotely without losing out on work, family, or friends.  

Also Read: 6 Simple Recession-Proof Business Ideas for 2020

Closing Thoughts

While companies and industries worldwide are undergoing this paradigm shift towards digital transformation, it is only intuitive that the best way to simplify maintenance operations is to go digital.

As an organization, using a reliable SaaS tool is the first step to get you on the track to digitization.