When maintenance information systems are really adapted to users’ needs and are suitably interfaced with the legacy information systems, they can be of great value to maintenance operatives. Both in terms of management (planning and tracking of operations) and decision support (scorecards that contain equipment or process performance indicators, analysis of recurrent failures).

Moreover, if these systems are correctly interfaced with existing systems or measure the behavior or wear of equipment, they can facilitate the processing of information and open the way for the implementation of advanced maintenance concepts, which may be conditional or predictive.

The implementation of a CMMS can therefore improve maintenance practices and further enhancing skills. However, careful preparations are necessary before selecting and implementing a solution, otherwise the project will experience the usual problems: running over time and over budget, results that do not meet expectations or justify the efforts made.

ARGON Consulting helps its customers in:

• the analysis of existing maintenance practices and, where appropriate, the use of an existing CMMS: in particular, an understanding of the existing operations management practices (planning, preparation, definition of spares requirements) and technical data (arborescence, equipment, repair procedures, maintenance plans),
• the definition of the target business processes,so that the target business vision is as clear as possible and guides the decisions to implement or to adapt the existing CMMS, and not the contrary,
• the construction of a business case that objectively defines the expected gains of the initiative and the synergies with other ongoing initiatives,
• the authoring of the functional and technical specifications that guide the pre-selection of solutions according to the organization’s specific needs, and in line with the organization’s guiding principles applying to information systems,
• the management of the call for tender: independent pre-selection of a short list of solutions, definition of the selection criteria, which may require the development of a prototype with a real test sample,
• implementation support, mainly by defining the new business processes in detail,
• transfer of skills and know-how to the customers’ teams.