A maintenance management system alone is not enough to manage maintenance shutdown – a solution is now available

The computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is designed especially as a tool for the maintenance personnel of production facilities. It is an important tool for manufacturing plants, where it is used to store maintenance data. WIth CMMS preventive and corrective maintenance are managed. It is used to manage assets of production facilities, spare parts, defect reports and work orders related to assets. Traditionally, the maintenance department of production facilities manages its area of ​​responsibility using a CMMS, while production manages its own area of ​​responsibility using other methods. The production personnel do not use the maintenance system, because it does not enable the management of production work in a smooth way. The maintenance system cannot therefore be used as the only tool for managing the entire maintenance shutdown. 

The proportion of tasks that are not in the maintenance system can be considerably large. For example, during short shutdowns of a paper machine, maintenance-related work is only approx. 10-20%, which is quite a small part of the entirety. Most of the work is productional upkeeping/maintenance and safety tasks. When the entirety cannot be managed in the maintenance system, a lot of paper check lists and working instructions have to be used. When the systems in use do not support real-time shutdown management, people have to manage the situation by phone, messages and status review meetings. 

If the shutdowns will be managed according to plans, other tools are required in addition to the CMMS. Tools suitable for overall management offer the teams an effective solution for managing maintenance shutdown. So it's not worth trying to apply systems to uses for which they are not suitable. 

We have developed the Tool4pro® task and project management application, which is ideal for managing complex maintenance shutdowns for all stakeholders. Below are a few significant factors that make maintenance downtime management successful with Tool4pro®

• With the help of the application, the tasks of all parties can be done within the same interface.

• The plans are visible in real time to everyone all the time

• In Tool4pro, dependencies can be set between tasks to ensure, for example, the safety of maintenance work and the systematic execution of work flow

• The Tool4pro® application makes it possible to attach the entire work instructions to the work task, for example as files, images or videos.

• Transparent monitoring of work progress improves the flow of information and eases the workload of supervisors. 

With the application developed to manage the entirety, it is possible to get better control of maintenance shutdowns. In this way, the duration of downtime can be shortened by up to 20%, which increases productivity significantly.