Experienced facility managers know the value of improving productivity in the workplace. After all, a big part of facility management is to help the building’s occupants for which they are responsible. Most of the facility management tasks today have become automated, saving valuable time and costs for businesses. But how did many organizations improve their maintenance team’s productivity? Let’s not beat around the bush: it’s by using automated systems, such as facility management software or computerized maintenance management system (CMMS).
Through automation, managers can streamline maintenance scheduling, extend the lifespan of assets, complete more detailed forecasting for inventory, and take their maintenance requests anywhere they go via laptop or smartphone.
Time is money, so when maintenance managers improve productivity, they also contribute to their bottom line and job satisfaction.
Let’s take a look at how automated maintenance management systems improve productivity.
Central dashboard for multi-facility operations
Maintenance managers who are responsible for overseeing operations at multiple locations or buildings have an added level of difficulty in the job that they do. While they may receive work requests on smartphones, emails, or the web, they need one central location to keep their team organized and manage all the requests.
Via CMMS or facility management software, maintenance managers can multiple facilities and locations more effectively. And because maintenance technicians and other staff can view maintenance requests from a smartphone, managers can save time in phone calls and text messages by simply assigning their employee that is close by the location of the needed maintenance through a CMMS.
Get Notifications for Scheduled Maintenance
One of the largest contributing factors to lack of productivity and maintenance overtime is unexpected maintenance requests that could have been easily dealt with by preventative maintenance. With an automated maintenance system, you can set the timeframe for when you want to receive maintenance notifications on equipment so that you can schedule it within the week while your staff is already in the area.
Your operations can slow down or put to a halt when your equipment malfunctions or the equipment may present a work hazard to those nearby. Preventing these sort of unanticipated interruptions can be the key to improving your company’s outcome, thus the bottom line. By scheduling maintenance, managers can better integrate that work into their daily or weekly schedule instead of performing maintenance right away when something goes wrong.
Replace manual data entry and spreadsheets
Before the advent of facility management technologies, maintenance managers were spending several hours per week updating spreadsheets with maintenance records. This process is not only time-consuming, but it also leaves room for omission and errors. From having to update the information of parts used that week that need to be reordered to the last time each piece of equipment received maintenance, these spreadsheets could become unmanageable.
By reducing errors and gaining greater visibility into the work that needs to be done, maintenance managers can focus on improving the team’s productivity by using analytics and data pulled from an automated maintenance management system. Reporting features can show the life expectancy of assets and help managers transition from reactive to proactive smoothly.
Training and Development
Staff members may be told to “do this; don’t do that”, but aren’t taught about the rationale (the “why”) for those instructions or why they are told to do something in a certain way. From a productivity standpoint, knowing “why” allows staff to make decisions in the absence of direction, provide alternatives, and make adjustments if the initial instructions prove incorrect or insufficient.
A facility management CMMS software with training management capabilities would significantly help in this case. These applications also show where your employees are spending their time. If an employee spends too much time to perform a specific task compared to his or her peers, managers can offer further training and guidance to that employee to improve their outcome.
Maintenance managers might struggle to see when and where their employees spend their time when managing maintenance requests on paper. An automated maintenance management system clarifies that by showing what employees are up to and the requests they respond to.
Reduces the Likelihood of Machine Breakdown
The high-performance output is very closely related to the well-being of your equipment, as well as the environment where employees work. Some businesses are completely reliant on machines, which means a breakdown would have severe consequences. One of the biggest advantages of automated maintenance management systems is that it dramatically reduces downtime by streamlining planned and preventative maintenance. If repairs are planned in advance, businesses can minimize the number of situations where they need to stop production due to an unexpected breakdown. Additionally, a well-planned preventative maintenance strategy helps managers avoid all those extra staff-hours required for emergency repairs.
Simplified Request Intake Process
If you are a maintenance manager, you probably do not want to sit all day in the office answering calls or emailing maintenance requests, or hiring someone to do that. Instead, with an automated system, you can simply log work requests directly and notify the party on duty via their mobile phone. Your employees can choose to accept the work request and log all the necessary information directly from their smartphone wherever they are.
Wrapping It Up
It might be tricky to create a highly productive environment for your maintenance team, but you won’t find anybody saying it wasn’t worth it. A massive step in the right direction is adopting and utilizing automated systems, such as CMMS or facility management software. With it, your maintenance department won’t be more productive on its own but will provide you with a significant boost in productivity. That said, if you previously rated your maintenance team’s productivity as an 8, maybe that little boost is all you need to make it 10.
