Best Equipment Maintenance Software
Buyer's Guide
Businesses in the manufacturing and industrial industries rely on their equipment like a life raft. Without proper equipment, efficiency and productivity would drop or possibly grind to a halt. Even if you have the necessary equipment, you need to make sure every asset is operating at peak performance. Enter equipment maintenance software (better known as CMMS software) — business software that makes managing and scheduling equipment maintenance a breeze.
Executive Summary
- With an equipment maintenance solution, you can keep tabs on your inventory, track facility usage and costs, manage maintenance, and more.
- There are a few different, yet essential, types of equipment maintenance software. CMMS, CAFM, EAM and IWMS are all a part of equipment maintenance, and your need for each one of these depends on what type of business or facility you manage.
- Equipment maintenance software streamlines preventive maintenance tasks, manages maintenance histories of assets and enhances work order management.
- Searching for the right equipment maintenance solution requires thorough research about software vendors and products available in the market.
- What Is Equipment Maintenance Software?
- CMMS vs. Equipment Maintenance
- Primary Benefits
- Implementation Goals
- Basic Features & Functionality
- Advanced Features to Consider
- Current Trends
- Software Comparison Strategy
- Cost & Pricing Considerations
- The Most Popular Equipment Maintenance Software
- Questions to Ask Yourself
- Questions to Ask Vendors
- In Conclusion
- Product Comparisons
- Additional Resources
What Is Equipment Maintenance Software?
The name is fairly self-explanatory, but there are some complexities to equipment management software that are important to understand. Equipment maintenance tracking software assists facility managers in the maintenance of their equipment. Users can schedule maintenance, submit work orders, log equipment history and much more to track equipment health.
What makes heavy equipment maintenance management software especially powerful is its automation capabilities. From managing inventory to scheduling preventive maintenance to tracking work orders, equipment maintenance software greatly eases the burden of tracking maintenance manually.
Facilities managers simply need to look in the system to see the most recent maintenance date, the next scheduled date and how much part inventory they have left to perform repairs.
CMMS vs. Equipment Maintenance
You may have heard another acronym for the management of maintenance: computerized maintenance management software or CMMS. Facilities managers use CMMS as a preventive maintenance scheduling software that schedules and tracks maintenance, manages work orders and tracks inventory. It is very similar to equipment management, computer-aided facilities management (CAFM) and enterprise asset management software (EAM) — the differences are mostly in scope and semantics, especially when it comes to EAM vs. CMMS.
CMMS manages more than just equipment. It can be used for facility management, including property, vehicle fleets and all of your equipment. In addition, most CMMS systems come with a robust collection of features that might be more than you need. Some of the most common CMMS features include project management, labor availability, document management and compliance requirement management.
Equipment maintenance software is basically a type of CMMS specialized for equipment management. There are many areas where the two overlap, as most CMMS offer equipment maintenance management programs.
Primary Benefits
Equipment maintenance software offers a range of benefits for your preventive maintenance activities, maintenance tracking, work order management and inventory management activities.
So how exactly do facilities managers utilize their equipment maintenance software? Let’s explore:
Improve Preventive Maintenance
Unscheduled equipment downtime can lead to skyrocketing repair costs, and the price of replacing equipment that breaks down early can be astronomical. These are unnecessary expenses that hinder the performance of your entire business, not just the facility holding the equipment.
Preventive maintenance is a key step for any organization that owns facilities, maintains assets or uses machinery. Planned maintenance data is the most important key performance indicator for most facility managers. Preventive maintenance is a proactive or preventive action in taking care of equipment before issues arise.
Preventive maintenance software for heavy equipment provides scheduling features that allow managers to schedule regular maintenance on each piece of equipment you own, ensuring a productive facility.
Maxpanda offers color-coded maintenance scheduling features.
These schedules are digital, which means they can send out routine maintenance alerts at predetermined intervals, or they can alert users when they miss important maintenance events. This not only helps maintain a maintenance routine based on set timelines, but it also makes it much harder for human error (i.e., forgetting to reschedule routine maintenance tasks) to result in equipment damage.
Another powerful aspect of regularly scheduled maintenance isn’t only the scheduling itself but also the access it provides. Anybody who has access to the maintenance software can view maintenance schedules, which helps keep everyone in the loop on tasks and work order completion.
You can assign tasks to specific technicians and set them to only allow closure by managers. This keeps everyone accountable for their portion of the work, in addition to streamlining the process.
Track Maintenance History
Maintenance tracking software, which tracks the maintenance history of equipment, is equally as important as scheduling preventive maintenance, especially for heavy equipment repair. It’s important to make note of all repairs done to a piece of equipment for a plethora of reasons.
One key argument for heavy equipment maintenance tracking software is that you may find a pattern in small issues, leading to the discovery of a bigger one. For example, if certain parts continuously need replacing, you may find that someone isn’t using the equipment properly or that a system is malfunctioning internally in a way that might not matter in the short term but causes long-term wear and tear.
Hippo’s equipment tracking lets you keep tabs on the location of all your machinery and other assets.
Another benefit of maintenance tracking is to get more accurate mean-time-between-failure data. This helps managers have a better idea of the profitability of their assets and determine whether they are reaching their estimated life span.
It can also help them forecast when new pieces of equipment need to be purchased based on previous asset life spans. This way, your organization can ensure they are prepared ahead of time with the funds to replace assets reaching the end of their usability.
Plus, it’s always helpful to have a complete maintenance history of all of your equipment. If a machine fails despite being properly maintained, users can access these maintenance logs to prove warranty claims and prevent other potential legal action that can come from faulty records.
Enhance Work Orders
Lots of facility managers have a love-hate relationship with work orders. They love them when they’re organized and hate them when they’re not. Regardless of how you feel about them, they’re a necessary part of facility and equipment management. That’s why equipment maintenance software with work order management modules tries to make work orders as painless as possible.
Equipment maintenance management software keeps all work orders organized in a single place within the system so that users know exactly where to look for them. It makes it easy to check on orders, old and new, and see the status of current tasks. This can make a huge difference in your productivity.
eMaint lets users monitor work order completion and performance from an intuitive dashboard.
Digitizing your work orders has numerous benefits like increasing the productivity of your maintenance team and security as well.
The whole maintenance team can view work orders and see when they are marked complete, and users can choose whether to allow technicians to mark their own work orders as finished or set role-based access so only managers can sign off on work order completion. This streamlines workflows, ensures accountability and improves the collaboration of the work order process.
Plus, digital work orders can’t be destroyed in a fire or flood as paper records can. This added level of security helps ensure the longevity of your records.
Simplify Inventory Management
One of the worst experiences for a facility is when an important piece of equipment breaks down, and you don’t have the right parts to fix it. You then have to wait for the part to ship, during which you lose valuable time and money. And in order to get the part faster and reduce downtime, you’ll probably have to pay for expedited shipping. These extra costs are easily avoidable when using equipment maintenance software.
Another crucial aspect of any business is properly controlling your inventory. From your largest assets to the smallest of parts, a good inventory management module in a CMMS translates to a huge reduction in costs.
Equipment maintenance tools specifically control the parts inventory for your equipment. Using the system, you can check how much of each spare part you have left in stock. When you realize you’re getting low on a part, you can order that part early so you don’t have to wait to make a repair.
Users can also find patterns in part use — this helps procurement employees order the right number of items at the right frequency, reducing the chances of overstocking or running out of parts. These insights help managers create more accurate financial predictions and other long-term plans.
Implementation Goals
Asset-heavy organizations can use equipment maintenance software to optimize asset use and streamline processes throughout the organization. Here are a couple of implementation goals you can achieve:
| Goal 1 Make Data-Driven Maintenance Decisions |
Equipment maintenance systems track maintenance data from your equipment and assets. This data helps schedule maintenance better before the asset breaks down. |
|---|---|
| Goal 2 Improve Collaboration and Communication |
With equipment maintenance software, you can assign tasks to relevant technicians and prioritize them based on urgency. |
| Goal 3 Automate Maintenance Processes |
When you automate tasks like maintenance reminders and work order organization, it reduces manual tracking and frees up valuable time for more important duties. It reduces human error and streamlines workflows throughout the organization. |
| Goal 4 Increase Asset Control |
Monitoring asset conditions is essential. Equipment maintenance systems allow users to track minute details of individual assets such as warranty information, maintenance history and MTBF (mean time between failure) data. |
| Goal 5 Optimize Maintenance Processes |
Equipment maintenance solutions ensure organizations get the most out of available resources, including funds, personnel, equipment and facilities, by managing them more effectively. |
You can achieve these goals by implementing good equipment maintenance software. However, you can’t simply deploy the first one you find on the market. You’ll need to choose software with a combination of basic and advanced features. We’ve compiled a list of essential features to consider.
Basic Features & Functionality
| Work Order Management | Work order management involves creating and managing work orders for various maintenance jobs. It streamlines maintenance processes by assigning work to relevant technicians, creating recurring tasks, triggering alerts and more. |
|---|---|
| Preventive Maintenance | Preventive maintenance deals with performing routine maintenance tasks performed to avoid sudden breakdown or failure of equipment. |
| Inventory Management | Inventory management often comes as a built-in module of equipment maintenance software designed to track spare parts. These capabilities can include procurement, vendor and supplier management, stockroom management, multi-site tracking, lockout-tagout systems, and spare parts logs. |
| Reporting and Analysis | Equipment maintenance systems have become much more advanced in their reporting and analysis capabilities. Now you can integrate BI tools with a CMMS to mine actionable data useful in making facility-related decisions. Users can generate reports on work order completion rates, track KPIs in real time, monitor condition metrics, create asset-specific forecasts and much more. |
| Asset Tracking | Asset tracking solutions help you track asset downtime, warranties, asset depreciation rates and current values. They also enable you to set an asset hierarchy and store and view assets by name, ID, model, warranty, manuals, location and more. You can track assets across multiple locations. |
Advanced Features & Functionality
| Mobile CMMS | Mobile apps simplify maintenance and data collection for field and facility operators. You can use a mobile app to scan barcodes, add, edit and update maintenance data, access work orders, track labor hours, and upload photos and documents. CMMS apps are mostly available for both Android and iOS. |
|---|---|
| Project and People Tracking | Manage personnel and projects under a single interface. Create projects consisting of multiple work orders and store employee records. You can track budget, labor hours and employee certifications. Use charts and reports to monitor the project’s progress, time spent and resources used. |
| Purchase Order Management | Using equipment maintenance software, you can create and track purchase orders by date, part details, shipping information and vendor information. It helps you log PO receipts and submits requests for parts that are low in stock. You can also create blanket purchase orders and set rules to automate the approval and rejection of purchase orders. |
| Vendor and Customer Management | Vendor management makes it easy to maintain relationships and deadlines with vendors and customers. You can create contracts and POs and collate vendor information with vendor management modules. |
Current Trends
As with all technology, vendors continue to adapt maintenance equipment software to meet the ever-evolving needs of their customers. From remote maintenance to enhanced maintenance insights, there are some exciting developments to keep your eye on.
Here are current trends expected to transform equipment maintenance.
Remote Maintenance
With most workplaces operating on a remote or hybrid model, it’s important for facilities to adapt to remote maintenance practices sooner rather than later. Remote maintenance involves planning, scheduling, maintaining and managing equipment from a remote location.
Cloud computing is gradually making a mark for itself by helping various organizations manage maintenance during the pandemic. It helps to increase productivity and collaboration and enables timely maintenance.
Maintenance Insights
Maintenance insights offer an opportunity to understand the real issues and potential problems that a facility might face. It is also very handy when it comes to long-term maintenance planning.
For example, when you have data on how long equipment has been running and the last time it needed maintenance, you can get an idea of when it will need maintenance again in the future.
Inventory Tracking
When you plan maintenance and realize that the required equipment is not in stock, it delays the maintenance program and leaves you helpless — your time and resources wasted.
This is why it is important to track inventory so you know where to find it when you need it.
Software Comparison Strategy
Now that you know how to use industrial equipment maintenance software, you might be wondering how to go about selecting it. Here’s a quick rundown of how to find the best heavy equipment maintenance software for your business:
Gather Requirements
To ensure your equipment maintenance solution fits your unique needs, you must identify those needs. Different equipment maintenance management platforms specialize in different features, so choosing a platform that excels in the features you need most is a great way to make sure your needs match up. Our CMMS requirements template can help guide you through the requirements gathering process.
Remember, just because software offers more features doesn’t mean it will be a better fit for your business. Overbuying features you won’t use is one of the main ways organizations end up with a CMMS solution that is too sprawling or expensive. Focus on the key features you identify through the template and build conservatively from there.
Compare Vendors
Once you’ve identified the most important features for your organization, you can begin comparing vendors that create CMMS and equipment maintenance software. We recommend comparing platforms based on how well they deliver the features you identified in the last step.
This comparison report is a great way to get started and compare industry leaders. For those in the manufacturing industry, we suggest focusing on platforms with industrial or heavy machinery specialization.
Create a Shortlist and Request Trials
You should be able to create a shortlist of five to seven solutions that meet your requirements using this comparison method. Now it’s time to compare their prices and interface. This industry pricing guide can help give you a ballpark idea of how much certain solutions cost, but a price quote is key to an accurate estimate. Because every business’s requirements are unique, vendors charge based on the number of user licenses and the different combinations of features or modules you want to use.
When you’ve discounted any systems too far out of your price range, you should ask the remaining shortlisted vendors for a free trial or demo. This will allow you to get a feel for the user interface of the system — one of the most important aspects of business software. It’s also an aspect you can’t really understand simply from reading reviews, so this trial is a crucial step.
Cost & Pricing Considerations
Factors such as deployment method, features, cost per user and customization can affect your software budget.
Pricing models like subscription-based or one-time, flat fees can also help you filter out vendors that may or may not be suitable for your organization. Other factors that affect the cost are integrations, setup, training and maintenance.
The Most Popular Equipment Maintenance Software
There are different solutions available on the market today, and each offer varied sets of features and functionalities. That being said, our analysts have compiled a list of the top five equipment maintenance apps in the industry.
Fiix
Fiix offers cloud-based computerized facility and maintenance management software that helps teams organize their assets, manage repair work, integrate their operations through connected business platforms and make data-based decisions.
It manages assets in multiple locations and streamlines workflows.
Manage parts and supplies in different locations with Fiix.
UpKeep
UpKeep is a mobile-based computerized maintenance management system suitable for companies of all sizes and types.
It helps you monitor assets, track stockrooms, schedule preventive maintenance, reduce downtime, manage work orders and automate workflows. It offers an interactive dashboard, procurement management, cost analysis and forecasting, and more.
UpKeep’s inventory management module maintains accurate stock records.
ServiceChannel
ServiceChannel is a web- and mobile-based software that enables you to manage processes and payments, find contractors, track work orders, reduce expenses, stay compliant, receive timely alerts, and access real-time information.
Its features include service automation, reporting, PM, energy management and site management.
ServiceChannel helps manage and schedule work orders and tasks.
Maintenance Connection
Maintenance Connection is an operating system ideal for organizations of all sizes, available in web-hosted and self-hosted versions. It helps organizations extend asset life spans, manage maintenance tasks, assign asset hierarchies, reduce asset downtime, improve productivity and boost ROI.
Its core capabilities include work order management, asset management, preventive maintenance, inventory management, predictive maintenance, calibration management and reporting.
Maintenance Connection helps view and manage all work orders.
Fracttal
Fracttal is an IoT-enabled CMMS that measures environmental quality, provides asset status and offers accurate reporting by linking to your maintenance program.
It offers maintenance management functionality to your company remotely from any device. It comes in three separate solutions for asset management, condition monitoring and fleet management.
To learn more about this shortlist and see how different features of these industry leaders compare, check out our in-depth CMMS comparison matrix.
Fracttal helps view and manage all work orders in a unified interface.
Questions To Ask Yourself
It's important to understand the objectives you’re trying to fulfill and the purpose of the equipment maintenance software in your organization before choosing a vendor. Some important questions to ask yourself as an organization and team are:
- Which delivery methods do you need?
- Do you need additional IT infrastructure?
- What remote management capabilities do you need?
- How do you plan to protect your data?
- Does your equipment maintenance software need to integrate with other business software like ERP?
Questions To Ask Vendors
The vendor’s experience, capabilities, portfolio and vision for the product all matter. Before you settle on one of the many equipment maintenance software vendors, find out:
About the Software
- Does the software integrate with advanced technologies like IoT and AI?
- Is it mobile-friendly?
- Does the software offer real-time updates for field personnel?
- What is the usage level of the software — is it user-friendly or complex?
- Can this platform integrate with other business software?
About the Vendor
- Does the vendor have a good track record and suitable references?
- Does the vendor understand the unique needs of your specific business and industry?
- Is the vendor actively investing in continuous software improvements?
- What kind of post-implementation training does the vendor provide?
- How available is this vendor to provide ongoing customer support?
In Conclusion
No matter what type of equipment your business uses, you can benefit from implementing equipment maintenance tools. It makes managing your equipment preventive maintenance, work orders and inventory simple and streamlined. You can boost your productivity, improve equipment life spans and increase profits through methodical equipment maintenance.
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