In recent years manufacturers and by extension, maintenance teams, have faced a series of challenges from pandemics, supply chain slowdowns, and now a demand for skills in the workforce that are difficult to come by. At the same time Industry 4.0 technologies(opens in new tab)—such as automation, IoT, AI, and advanced robotics(opens in new tab) have streamlined many production processes, and the demand for skilled workers who can operate, maintain, and optimize these systems has subsequently increased.
It’s become clear that there’s a widening gap in skills for manufacturers aiming to remain competitive. But without a workforce that’s knowledgeable in digital tools and systems, operational efficiency, productivity, and overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)(opens in new tab) are at risk.
In this blog we will address the current skills gap facing manufacturers and maintenance teams and provide solutions to upskill the current workforce, and strategies to address skill gap challenges.
What is the skills gap and why has it become critical?
The skills gap refers to the issue surrounding current labor markets where finding workers who have the manual, operational, and technical skills necessary to work in manufacturing and by extension, maintenance has become tiresome and difficult. According to our State of Smart Manufacturing (2024)(opens in new tab) report, attracting new employees with desired skillsets has become the number one obstacle manufacturers are facing in terms of their growth. Additionally, in the previous year’s report (2023), 84% of respondents identified employee retention as their top obstacle. This data tells us that not only has the demand for skilled workers increased, so has the desire to retain these workers.
The skills gap has then slowly creeped up to becoming a big concern as of late. Some of the key reasons why are:
Rapid technological advancements: Industry 4.0 has introduced things like automation, artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), and predictive maintenance (PdM). These things require a workforce that’s knowledgeable in data analytics, machine learning (ML), and machine operation. Many workers, however, lack the skills to manage and maintain these systems.
An aging workforce: A big portion of the manufacturing and by extension maintenance workforce is nearing retirement. As these skilled workers leave, there’s a shortage of younger workers to fill their roles.
Lack of necessary training and documentation: Without proper training programs and up-to-date documentation, current employees cannot effectively operate and maintain advanced systems. There’s also the challenge of little to no team members available to train new employees who are onboarding.
Declining interest in trades and technical education: There’s been a societal shift that emphasizes college and university degrees over vocational training and technical careers. As a result, fewer young people are pursuing the skills needed for manufacturing and maintenance roles.
As these challenges merge, the skills gap becomes an important factor in the disruption of daily operations. It also jeopardizes long-term competitiveness in a changing industrial landscape, and also causes a productivity decrease and safety risk.
“The challenges teams are facing today in terms of skills gap causes a lot of disruption. For one thing, there’s a decline in productivity that’s a result of limited knowledge and expertise, then there’s the inability to use any new technologies since workers aren’t trained or skilled in them,” says Jason Afara, our Director of Solutions Consultants. He adds: “There’s also safety considerations, like the improper use of machines and equipment, failure to follow safety protocols, risk of equipment failure…all of these things tie back to the skills gap.” A final point Jason highlights is that the skills gap also puts additional strain on your best team members, since the team is often going to them to do more.
With so many risks to consider, what can teams do to mitigate and manage the challenges quickly?
“Well, the good news is there’s lots of ways to manage the skills gap, and we’re in the age of AI. Teams can start using AI to track data, retain knowledge, and manage processes,” says Jason. He adds: “We already do this on our CMMS for maintenance teams and have a knowledge repository for assets so that things don’t get lost if a skilled worker leaves or isn’t available.”
Jasons points present an interesting solution for manufacturers and maintenance teams to consider when addressing the skills gap. Leveraging technology like AI has grown in popularity, in fact, according to our State of Smart Manufacturing (2024) report, manufacturers believe that GenAI or casual AI is the #1 technology to address workforce challenges. Additionally, 83% of respondents anticipate using GenAI, making it the #1 on the list of technological investments for 2024.
Aside from leveraging AI, there are many different solutions to upskill the current workforce, one of the most obvious is for organizations to invest in training and development. This can take many different forms but the best steps to follow are:
Emphasizing the importance of continuous education and training for existing employees by having mandatory course credit requirements per year.
Investing in training programs like on-the-job training, online courses, and certifications.
Incentivizing managers and people leaders to foster a culture of education and upskilling. This can take the form of financial incentives (i.e., bonuses).
Tip for teams having trouble finding time to train their staff: You likely can’t take the entire team off the floor, but you could set aside some time to train team members once a week to ensure there is proper coverage on the floor.
Additionally, there’s also leveraging technology for upskilling. Employers can have their teams use e-learning platforms and virtual reality (VR) for practical training. There are even companies that offer VR training and specific authorized training centers, which is something companies can utilize to be most cost effective. Organization can also partner with educational institutions, this can include:
Partnering with local colleges, universities and trade schools to create tailored training programs.
Developing apprenticeship and co-op programs as pathways to development.
Using technology and automation to address the skills gap
Beyond just educational solutions, teams can also use automation and technology to help narrow the gap in the workforce. But integrating automation is a supplement, not a replacement for skilled workers. That being said, automation can bridge the gap over time by taking on routine tasks that don’t require a high-level of experience or expertise.
As Jason explains, “automation can cut the pressure on the business and teams who are lacking skilled workers… for example, technicians can use technology like a CMMS or specialized machine operations to help with automated and human tasks.” Let’s clarify what’s automated versus human tasks with some examples:
Automated tasks: Routine inspections, data collection, inventory management, and certain aspects of production processes like welding or assembly can be fully automated. These processes can be performed with greater speed and accuracy by machines, reducing the need for a large workforce in these roles.
Human-centric tasks: On the other hand, tasks that require critical thinking, creativity, and decision-making, such as diagnosing machine malfunctions, developing new production processes, or maintaining human-machine collaboration, remain reliant on human expertise. Human workers are essential in overseeing operations, managing automated systems, and troubleshooting when machines encounter unforeseen problems.
The good news is that by leveraging automation and technology, organizations can optimize their operations without sacrificing human touch. Additionally, people can work on more creative problem solving versus routine laborious tasks.
Human-machine collaboration and the skills gap
The role of workers will shift from performing manual tasks to managing, monitoring, and optimizing the performance of automated systems. Human-machine collaboration will allow for greater efficiency and productivity, but it requires a shift in mindset and skill set. Workers need to be equipped with the technical know-how to operate and collaborate with these advanced systems.
“To make the shift successful and less painful, companies got to invest in training and upskilling their workforce,” says Jason. According to him training should focus on three core areas:
Technical proficiency: Employees need to learn how to operate, maintain, and troubleshoot the automation tools and systems in place. This may include training in data analysis, machine learning, or how to use predictive maintenance software.
Soft skills: Workers must also develop skills in communication, teamwork, and problem-solving to collaborate effectively within a tech-enabled environment.
Succession planning: Managers should lead crossover meetings and have open communication with their employees to foster a positive culture.
Many forward-thinking companies have already embraced human-machine collaboration with impressive results. For instance, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles introduced collaborative robots—known as cobots—to work alongside their human employees on the production line. Cobots handle repetitive and physically demanding tasks, while human workers focus on quality control and problem-solving, creating a balanced workflow that leverages the strengths of both. This example demonstrates how a business can close the skills gap by embracing automation, not as a replacement for human workers but as a complement that enhances their capabilities.
Closing the skills gap will lead to more efficient operations
Addressing the skills gap in the manufacturing and maintenance sectors is crucial for the industry’s growth and resilience. By upskilling the current workforce and attracting new talent, businesses can bridge this divide and position themselves for long-term success. Industry leaders must take proactive steps in workforce development—whether through internal training, partnerships with educational institutions, or collaborations with recruitment.
What can maintenance teams do to help meet the biggest business challenges of 2024? The impact of maintenance goes far beyond just downtime, so let’s dive into the results of Rockwell Automation’s 9th annual State of Smart Manufacturing Report (SoSM) to uncover the top obstacles facing manufacturers, how maintenance teams can help, and the useful technology investments delivering results.
The State of Smart Manufacturing
If you had to summarize this year’s SoSM report in one word, it might be “optimistic.” While the challenges facing manufactures are real, so are the potential solutions. In the face of economic headwinds, labor shortages, skills gaps, and cybersecurity concerns, decision-makers are turning to advanced industrial operations technology like AI to meet their concerns (SoSM, pg. 5). But before we get to the solutions, let’s breakdown the report’s top challenges to manufacturing growth in 2024.
By automating data analysis to generate predictive and prescriptive actions, industrial organizations can realize efficiency gains and overcome key challenges. – Sandy D’Souza, Fiix Product Expert
The Top Obstacles to Growth in 2024
As in previous years, this year’s SoSM report distinguishes between external and internal obstacles to growth.
Top 5 External Obstacles to Growth
Inflation
Rising energy costs
Cybersecurity risks
Shortages of skilled workers
Supply chain disruption
Unsurprisingly, rising inflation and energy prices topped the list as global events and supply-demand mismatches continue to impact companies in all sectors. In fact, inflation tops the list of external obstacles for the second year running. These pressures hit manufacturers particularly hard because they depend on physical inputs and often run comparatively energy-intensive operations.
Interestingly, the emergence of cybersecurity risks in the number three spot speaks to the double-edged nature of technological progress: As manufacturers invest in the interconnectivity between the physical and digital worlds through OT and IT technology, this progress has also brought with it novel security concerns.
Finally, skilled worker shortages and supply chain disruption continue to dampen growth, although there are some encouraging signs on the horizon that the supply chain issues may be finally coming to an end.
Topping this year’s list of internal growth obstacles, the global skilled labor shortage rears its head once again, with respondents agreeing on the difficulty of attracting new talent. Related to this, the challenge of deploying new technologies took the number two spot, with the difficulties compounded by the skills shortage.
Budget constraints and the endless tug-of-war between quality and growth took the number three and four spots, respectively, reflecting perennial business concerns.
Finally, the challenge of collecting and interpreting data for improvement was revealed to be widespread, capturing the number five spot.
How Maintenance Teams Can Help
Maintenance teams have a unique role to play in addressing these obstacles to growth. Far from being a silo or cost center, maintenance is in fact uniquely poised to help manufacturers rise to their challenges.
Here are the top ten ways maintenance teams can help meet both the external and internal challenges to growth we explored above.
External Obstacles
Inflation: Control maintenance costs by optimizing equipment performance, minimizing downtime, and extending asset lifespan, thus mitigating the impact of inflation on operational expenses.
Rising energy costs: By implementing preventive maintenance schedules and energy-saving strategies, teams can reduce equipment inefficiencies and energy waste, resulting in lower energy consumption and cost savings over time.
Cybersecurity risks: A high-quality CMMS offers robust security features and data encryption protocols to protect sensitive maintenance data from cyber threats, ensuring the integrity and confidentiality of critical information within the system.
Shortage of skilled workers: Enhance workforce productivity by providing intuitive tools and resources for maintenance teams, enabling them to work more efficiently and autonomously, thus mitigating the impact of skilled labor shortages on maintenance operations.
Supply chain disruption: Minimize the impact of supply chain disruptions by optimizing spare parts inventory management, identifying alternative suppliers, and implementing contingency maintenance plans to ensure equipment uptime and operational continuity during disruptions.
Maintenance impacts all three components of OEE – Availability, Performance and Quality. With modern technologies, maintenance teams can proactively identify the early warning signs of issues that can negatively impact OEE and thereby improve profitability. – Sandy D’Souza, Fiix Product Expert
Internal Obstacles
Attracting new employees with desired skillsets: Enhance workforce attraction by adopting modern, cloud-based, and user-friendly technologies that help improve productivity and organization. Its intuitive interface and advanced features attract skilled workers looking for simple solutions to help with everyday tasks and decision making.
Deploying and integrating new technology: Simplify the deployment and integration of new technology by seeking solutions that offer seamless compatibility with existing systems through easy-to-use APIs, ensuring smooth implementation and minimal disruption to operations.
Internal budget constraints: Understand the ROI of operational tools like a CMMS, which offers transparent pricing models and flexible subscription options, which allows organizations to align their maintenance software investment with budget constraints without compromising on functionality or performance.
Balancing quality and growth: Balance quality and growth by optimizing the maintenance processes that reduce downtime and improve asset reliability, thereby enabling manufacturers to meet increasing production demands without sacrificing product quality or customer satisfaction.
Capturing and contextualizing data to improve: Use a CMMS to take advantage of advanced data analytics and reporting capabilities, allowing your organization to capture, analyze, and contextualize maintenance data to identify trends, optimize performance, and drive continuous improvement across their operations.
How Manufacturers Are Responding
Meanwhile, prompted by these internal and external pressures, manufacturers are stepping up technology investment to counter risks and meet their growth obstacles head-on. In fact, technology investment in manufacturing is up 30% year-over-year (SoSM, pg. 9)!
To meet 2024’s unique challenges, manufacturers are rallying behind Cloud/SaaS and GenAI solutions, voting them in as the first- and second-best choices for return on investment. More general AI/ML solutions also make the list, coming in at number four. And in fact, AI/ML were also selected as delivering bigger business outcomes than any other capability in 2024 (pg. 10)! Essentially what we’re seeing is companies using Cloud and AI technologies as a lever to offset the pressure of multiple external obstacles.
Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) rocketed up the technology priority list over the last twelve months, creating fierce demand for industrial applications embedded with this transformative technology – SoSM, pg. 4
Manufacturers and their maintenance teams can take advantage of these new technologies to overcome business obstacles by adopting a cloud-based, AI-powered CMMS solution like Fiix CMMS. Without a doubt, a CMMS like Fiix can exert a positive influence on every single one of the 10 internal and external business growth obstacles discussed above, digitizing existing process while unlocking entirely new ways of using your maintenance data to make decisions. But don’t take our word for it: Try Fiix for free today!
Paired with a data-driven culture, a modern CMMS can help establish corporate standards, set KPIs, and most importantly, measure operational performance and improvements over time. – Sandy D’Souza, Fiix Product Expert
About the SoSM Report
The State of Smart Manufacturing Report is an industry benchmark report detailing how manufacturers, OEMs, EPCs, SIs, and others are using and planning for technology in response to the challenges and opportunities they’re facing. The quality of any survey depends on a representative sample, and by drawing upon a large base of global industrial expertise, Rockwell Automation has made the 9th annual State of Smart Manufacturing Report their largest to date. Here are some key facts about this year’s report:
1,567 decision-makers in manufacturing participated in the survey
17 of the world’s top manufacturing countries were represented
64% of respondents work for firms with >$1B in revenue
The top industries surveyed were electronics/semiconductors, automotive, metals, and CPG
Maintenance has evolved a lot in the last 50 years. The tools, technology, processes, and people who make up this industry have also changed. As a profession, maintenance is made up of a diverse group of people that don’t just fix things, but who plan, purchase, design, analyze, and optimize. This includes technicians and maintenance managers, but also engineers, planners, and even IT personnel. In world-class companies, maintenance is an integral part of business operations contributing positively to an organization’s overall growth and profitability. But it wasn’t always this way.
In this article, we walk through the evolution of maintenance from a do-as-needed profession to a critical role in every facility, plant, and organization.
The journey to modern maintenance
In the journal of Hazardous Materials, N.S. Arunraj and J Maiti documented how maintenance has changed from World War II to the present day. In the article, it was clear that each generation saw an increase in production demands and needed their equipment to be reliable. The increased production made companies more profitable, and to ensure they continued to bring in revenue, they needed to make sure their equipment was reliable. This focus on reliability led to improvements in their maintenance strategy.
As part of this improvement, the techniques for performing maintenance have significantly changed. In the early days of maintenance, work was mostly reactive—teams fixed breakdowns only when they occurred. In the decades since, maintenance has embraced a proactive approach with the goal of preventing unplanned downtime of any sort before it happens.
To make the shift to world-class maintenance, each generation needed to improve how, when, and what type of maintenance was needed. The first thing to change was adding planned preventative maintenance to the first maintenance generation. This was a good start, but there was little way to predict what equipment would break and when, so a system needed to be created for planning and controlling work.
In the second and third generations, new technology and developments in failure theory helped to put the focus on predictive maintenance. This type of maintenance is part of the same family as preventive maintenance. However, predictive maintenance uses condition-monitoring tools and techniques and asset information to track real-time and historical equipment performance so you can anticipate failure before it happens. Since predictive maintenance aims to give you an ideal window for proactive maintenance tasks, it can help minimize the time equipment is being maintained, the production hours lost to maintenance, and the cost of spare parts and supplies.
These new maintenance practices changed the way maintenance was done. The most dominant of these was reliability centered maintenance, which provides a structure for determining what maintenance activities should be done and when. It works by identifying the functions of the company that are most critical and then seeking to optimize maintenance strategies to minimize system failures and increase equipment reliability and availability. With this maintenance strategy, possible failure modes and their consequences are identified, all while the function of the equipment is considered.
Most recently, the maintenance industry has begun to consider the total cost of asset ownership. Ideas such as evidence based asset management, risk-based maintenance, and total productive maintenance, have contributed to this. There has also been a big push toward adopting new technologies. The gradual adoption of maintenance management software and artificial intelligence have shown to be useful in improving and predicting a facility’s maintenance strategy.
Unfortunately for many companies, the fact is their maintenance is still seen as a necessary evil. For those companies, their maintenance has not stayed in touch with world-class maintenance practices. To progress, one of the first steps is to change the corporate culture so that maintenance is a cooperative partnership that can significantly contribute to profitability and customer satisfaction.
The maintenance department itself will have to up-skill and adopt new practices before the corporate culture changes to view maintenance as the important business function that it is. For the maintenance department, up-skilling will mean new techniques are learned to predict and prevent equipment failures. The new practices will include a more involved relationship with the production and management teams as well as adopting software tools that will facilitate a world-class maintenance practice.
Companies taking their first steps toward preventive maintenance often start with homemade maintenance spreadsheets. A maintenance spreadsheet lets you log work orders, document upcoming maintenance cycles, and use filters to manipulate the data and produce lists of work completed. The issue is, spreadsheets don’t talk to each other and can’t send notifications to technicians in the field. This means that maintenance managers and technicians must rely on other systems like email, phone, pagers, offline trackers, or even sticky notes to get a full picture of the work that needs to be done.
While they add more value than just pen and paper, spreadsheets have obvious limitations.
A CMMS and maintenance excel spreadsheets share some basic similarities but are used differently. Below is a table that illustrates some of the differences:
CMMS
Excel
Definition
A CMMS automates the collection and analysis of data to optimize maintenance operations
Maintenance spreadsheets log work orders and document upcoming maintenance
Manipulate data and produce lists of completed work
Disadvantages
It may be more difficult to customizeIt may be susceptible to cyber attacks
Limited access that lives on personal drivesUsually leads to a physical paper trail
Nine advantages of a CMMS over a maintenance spreadsheet
1. Automated preventive maintenance triggers.
Preventive maintenance software helps reduce human error by ensuring PMs are triggered when they are due in compliance with regulatory or manufacturer requirements. A good CMMS system can also activate PMs based on a number of maintenance triggers including time, meter, and event.
2. Auditing and compliance.
A CMMS digitizes your paper trail. Work orders are documented electronically as you go, even if you are working offline. This simplifies things in case of an audit.
3. Analysis and reporting.
A CMMS will report on maintenance key performance indicators (KPIs) such as MTBF, MTTF, and availability with little effort. KPIs are used to evaluate current operations’ effectiveness, make organizational and personnel decisions, and determine whether assets need to be repaired or replaced. Built-in reports enable you to refine maintenance processes and improve asset availability, ultimately improving your bottom line.
4. Access.
Maintenance spreadsheets live on a personal drive on a desktop computer, with limited access. With a cloud-based CMMS, the data is stored on a remote server and can be accessed from anywhere over the internet. Most modern CMMS software also comes with a mobile app so you can access your CMMS via your phone or tablet in the field.
5. Centralization.
Plan, control, forecast, measure performance, evaluate, and report all from one system.
6. Real-time information.
See your organization’s maintenance activities in real-time. Managers can see which assets are offline, who is working on what, and what still needs to be done.
7. Communication.
Work requests submitted into the system can instantly be sent to the correct people. Technicians receive notifications automatically so they know what work is due.
8. Centralized database.
Your CMMS is a database of all equipment information, documents, manuals, schematics and images, and materials. No need for your technicians to carry around bulky schematics or manuals. Over time, this becomes a repository for historical data on your assets, giving you a fuller picture of an asset’s performance.
9. Supply chain management.
A CMMS will automatically track parts inventory, manage suppliers and vendors effortlessly and help you keep inventory costs optimized. When parts are consumed during work orders, the CMMS depletes stock levels in real-time. There’s no need to go back to the desk and update those stock cards. If the stock falls below minimum levels, the system will notify the required users or suppliers to start the reordering process.
Spreadsheets might be cheaper in the short term, but a CMMS will save you costs in the long run
While a maintenance spreadsheet is the cheaper option in the short term, it’s inflexible and doesn’t react to what is going on in your facility. Its ability to minimize the costs associated with downtime, stocking parts, and management reporting time is low, at best.
A CMMS streamlines and automates all of this, and many solutions can be customized to suit your maintenance processes, no matter the size of your organization. Any business can effectively deploy a CMMS in any market sector for efficient asset management.
Switching to new maintenance management software can be a daunting task for so many reasons. There’s always a learning curve, it can be expensive, and there’s no guarantee that everyone in your organization will be on board.
But making the switch doesn’t have to be painful as long as you have the right software provider. At Fiix, we spend a lot of time talking to maintenance managers about why they do and don’t want maintenance software. From those conversations, we’ve collected the four biggest concerns for anyone adopting a CMMS, and paired each concern with solutions and resources to help navigate the transition.
Four barriers to adopting a CMMS and how to overcome them
1. Cost
Budget and cost are the number-one barriers for anyone considering switching to maintenance management software. It’s an investment, no matter which way you cut it. But modern, cloud-based software is far less expensive than on-premise software.
On top of the relatively low cost of the software itself, a CMMS can have a huge impact on your bottom line. It can help turn your maintenance department from a cost center into a value center since the software helps you gather data on assets, and make more educated decisions about where and when to use maintenance resources.
Outlining the financial benefits of maintenance management software helps get buy-in from senior executives. But oftentimes, the people who really see the benefit of maintenance software—the maintenance managers and technicians who use it on a day-to-day basis—don’t have the time to build a really compelling business case.
First and foremost, do your research. You know your company and your maintenance team, so you’re in the best position to choose maintenance management software that will help, not hinder daily operations. Resources like Capterra and G2 are great for comparing different vendors and will help you ensure you get a solution appropriate for your company size and technical know-how.
Luckily, this is an easy problem to solve. We went ahead and created a resource to help you sell maintenance management software to the higher-ups at your organization.
3. Installation and setup
In terms of installation, cloud-based software is relatively straightforward because there’s no on-site installation. Once you buy your software, it’s just a matter of logging in and you’re good to go.
But how easy it is to import assets really depends on your specific maintenance management software. There are a lot of CMMS vendors, and their products run the gamut from very simple to requiring dedicated IT help to set up.
With Fiix, you can easily import existing assets and data from CSV or Excel, which makes setup really straightforward. We also have a huge number of resources to help you navigate the first few days and weeks with your CMMS, including an amazing team of customer success specialists who are here to support you along the way.
Getting the maintenance team on board
You can’t just drop new software on your maintenance team and expect them to adapt. Bad change management can lead to resistance, which can delay or even halt software implementation.
We’ve addressed this particular challenge before. Basically, there are three simple ways to help manage resistance to change which are detailed below:
Keep your people informed throughout the process. No one likes being told things are changing once the ball is already rolling. Get input from your maintenance team right from the start, so you can get a CMMS with features that bolster your team’s productivity. Be sure to stress that it’s mostly business as usual, and be clear about what parts of the routine will change to help people adjust to the transition.
Be specific about the benefits of maintenance management software. A CMMS can have a huge, positive impact on the day-to-day job of maintenance technicians and on how your facility runs as a whole.
Never skip training. There is nothing as good as hands-on experience to help a new system seem a lot less daunting. Check out our training page and support center to see what kind of support we offer both during and after implementation.
Although there are barriers to adopting maintenance software, they’re well worth facing for the long-term value the software adds to your team
Although there may be a bit of a learning curve when it comes to implementing maintenance software, the long-term value for your organization is unmatched. Purchasing a CMMS for example can result in fewer equipment breakdowns, longer asset life, better compliance standards, and much more.
Maybe you’re at a stressful point in your business and the maintenance team is struggling to keep up. Your team suggests purchasing maintenance management software. But what type is best for your company?
There’s a lot of different software available—from computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) to enterprise asset management (EAM)—and it can be hard to choose which one is right for you. In this article, we’ll break down the differences between CMMS and EAM software so that you can decide which will benefit your business most.
What is a CMMS?
A CMMS is a software solution that can help you manage maintenance and asset. It’s useful for many industries, including manufacturing, construction, utilities, and transportation. A CMMS can be used to track maintenance requirements and work orders.
A CMMS will also allow you to create an inventory of assets such as tools or machinery that need to be maintained or repaired. This allows you to keep track of each item’s condition so that when it comes time for them to be serviced or replaced, they will have a history regarding the cost-effectiveness of doing so, versus simply buying new ones at a full retail price every time one breaks down.
What is EAM software?
Enterprise asset management (EAM) software is a tool that can be used to track the maintenance of all types of assets, from small equipment to large industrial machines. It allows you to keep track of what your assets are, where they are located, how much they cost, and when they need maintenance. EAM software allows you to easily generate reports on this information so that you can see at-a-glance which assets need repair or replacement.
What is the difference between CMMS and EAM?
The CMMS originated as a punch-card system used to manage work orders in the 1960s. But despite its relatively low-tech beginnings, the technology has come a long way. Today, it allows maintenance teams to easily keep a centralized record of all assets and equipment they are responsible for, as well as schedule and track maintenance activities and keep a detailed record of the work they’ve performed. Generally speaking, the purpose of a CMMS is to manage all maintenance activities during the operational part of an asset’s life—all the time that it’s working as a productive part of a facility.
In contrast with a CMMS, EAM software provides a view of an organization’s assets and infrastructure throughout the entire lifecycle, from creation or procurement to disposal. So while an EAM can technically provide the same capabilities that a CMMS does, there are additional features available through an EAM that may overlap with an organization’s ERP, or may not be a requirement at all for the team purchasing maintenance management software.
CMMS vs. EAM
A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) and enterprise asset management (EAM) software share some similarities but are used in different ways and for different purposes. Below is a table that illustrates some of the differences:
CMMS
EAM
Definition
A CMMS automates the collection and analysis of data to optimize maintenance operations. It can also be used to manage preventive maintenance activities.
An EAM software automates and analyzes data to help optimize maintenance operations as well as provide visibility into all crucial assets across an organization.
Advantages
Provides a single source of truth for all assetsReduces the risk of equipment failureImproves productivity and employee morale
Provides clear asset identification and managementImproves business processes through automation
Features
Monitors and optimizes scheduling work orders, purchasing inventory, and asset maintenance
Monitors, tracks and locates all critical assets, as well as monitors facility conditions
When it comes to technology it’s important to know what your options are
One of the difficulties of delineating a CMMS from an EAM software is that the gap between the two categories is more narrow than ever. Thanks to its start as a punch-card system, CMMS software is often seen as more rudimentary and less feature-rich than its EAM cousin. But when it comes to the capabilities shared between a CMMS and EAM, their quality and depth are more or less equal. The primary difference lies in scope.
Many CMMS solutions integrate with software like ERP systems in ways that allow them to perform similarly to EAM software, while still offering a user-friendly experience. The best course of action is to learn all you can about the solutions available to your team and determine which features are most important to help you hit your maintenance KPIs.
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