The saying goes Spur of the Moment, not Spur of a Few Moments Later…
Traditionally speaking, reports and dashboards are historical things. They are old, and the data they contain is dated by the time they get to the person who want it. This can be true even within an organization using a maintenance management software. Let’s look at a very common situation:
The Data Processor
In many organizations, maintenance is planned using a CMMS. The work orders that it generates are then printed out and given to the employees to be completed. The employee completes the work orders and then fills out the paper work order. This paper is then turned in to the data processor.
Sometimes, the data processor will have his own title, like service writer or work order processor. Sometimes it will just be a responsibility of another job, like maintenance manager. Regardless of who does it, their job is to take all of the printed work orders and manually enter them into the CMMS. As they work through the stack of work orders, data is entered into the platform and can then be accessed and reported on.
Do you see the issue here? It’s time.
Assuming that no work order ever gets lost and that the service writer can instantly input that work order (neither of which is true), the reports that come from the data and any dashboard that uses that data are out of date. If a Work Order was completed in the morning and not turned in until the end of the day, the data is 8 hours out of date.
This leads to many problems. It can cost you time, meaning your reports are late. It can cost you the labor it takes to enter it all in. And, it is inefficient. It costs you money, and even reduces your ROI on your CMMS.
Another drawback to using paper in any form is that it is easy to lose. An employee forgetting, losing, or misplacing a printed work order will likely lead to confusion. While this may not happen often, it is still an issue that paper systems have to deal with. This automatically introduces delays and/or misinformation into reports.
Having a data processor also introduces delay from the simple act of repeating labor. The work order is created and then printed. It must then be given to the employee to perform. These seem like small steps in the moment, but in aggregate, they become a major time sink. The employee then needs to take time to fill out the work order. But this time filling out a form is doubled because the services writer needs to do the exact same thing to get the information into the asset management system.
The Solution
The biggest way to solve the issues inherent in a paper-based work order system is to get rid of the paper. How do you get rid of the paper? With the ManagerPlus Mobile App. How does the ManagerPlus Mobile App solve these problems? Let’s look at another scenario.
In this scenario, the organization plans their preventive maintenance using the ManagerPlus Cloud Platform. Then, rather than printing and assigning work orders, they are assigned to the appropriate employee using our scheduling tool. This planning board immediately syncs with employee schedules so they can see their assigned work orders.
Employees use the ManagerPlus Mobile App to see their work from anywhere. They don’t have to spend time going to the printer or whiteboard to get their work orders and don’t need to return to report. Regardless of where they do their work, they can make notes, take pictures, and track the time they spend. As amazing as all this is, the best part is what happens next.
When the employee marks the work order as complete, it then syncs with your ManagerPlus Cloud platform. You don’t need to wait for the end of the day, or for your data processor to enter in the work order. It’s already there.
Why Time Matters
The phrase “time is money” is common wisdom. But how can saving time actually benefit your organization? By allowing you to make faster, real-time, accurate decisions. In a situation with a service writer, you may not discover that an asset is down until a day later or on a weekly report.
Getting up and running again is essential to your bottom line. As soon as an asset breaks down, ManagerPlus can send you a notification so you can immediately send someone to repair it. The sooner it is repaired, the sooner you are making money again.
Having reports that are accurate according to the very latest data is essential to the modern executive. Imagine committing to a project to deliver a specific shipment, or to manufacture a certain number of devices, only to discover that you are incapable of fulfilling your promise due to outdated reporting. Imagine making promises to stakeholders or even employees, knowing that your information could be wrong, simply because the latest data isn’t available yet.
When you use the ManagerPlus Mobile App as part of the ManagerPlus Asset Management Platform, you can finally eliminate the extra time inherent in paper-based systems and get real time data from your assets.
This is just the beginning of the benefits you can gain from ManagerPlus. Stay tuned to discover more of the incredible benefits your employees will gain from ManagerPlus Mobile.
