Optimise your equipment management for enhanced performance!

Equipment management is essential in any business sector, and is closely linked to quality management. It aims to guarantee the reliability, availability and conformity of a company's machinery and equipment, while applying a profitability approach.

The company's equipment and systems must function optimally to achieve its business objectives. However, this is subject to imperatives and constraints, including competition, changing regulations, time-to-market and the need to innovate. Effective equipment management has a positive impact not only on production, but also on other areas such as marketing, purchasing and customer service.

Maintaining, upgrading, checking, improving and simplifying: equipment management can be broken down into various activities. It includes not only carrying out maintenance, but also planning it. What are the objectives and tasks of equipment management in a company? How can you manage your equipment effectively? As we shall see, there are tools to help you make the right decisions, and that's where CMMS software comes into its own!

Objectives and challenges of equipment management

Which companies are concerned?

All types of company with a fleet of equipment to maintain are concerned. These may include

• Service sector companies with IT equipment (computers, printers, etc.) ;
• construction and public works companies (tools, etc.);
• production sites (industrial machinery, etc.).

Equipment in the broadest sense of the term can include any production tool, as well as emergency vehicles and personal protective equipment (PPE), for example.

The objective: to improve the company's productivity and competitiveness

The management of a company's equipment has a number of different objectives, each of which contributes in one way or another to the profitability of its use. The aim is to achieve a better allocation of resources in the management of tasks, in order to concentrate efforts on activities with the most direct impact on the company's productivity.

Good equipment management and the associated maintenance operations are aimed at achieving greater profitability, producing the expected quantity without increasing costs, and obtaining an overall view of the equipment pool, while reducing the risks for staff. In this way, by ensuring greater reliability of its value proposition, the company builds a better image with its customers and can become more competitive.

More specifically, what are the expected benefits?

The benefits of good equipment management

Here's what good equipment management can do for your business:

• saving time;
• optimised costs
• greater supervision and better control of risks;
• A safer working environment for operators and fewer accidents;
• meeting production deadlines ;
• Ensuring the quality of the product manufactured, thanks to periodic adjustments;
• guaranteeing product conformity, by monitoring regulatory developments;
• protecting the environment, etc.

This being the case, equipment management is of strategic importance for the entire company. It includes, in particular, servicing and maintenance, which must be given special attention.

The strategic role of servicing and maintenance

An integral part of equipment management, maintenance is at the crossroads of different expectations:

• it ensures that equipment operates in the short term, so that production requirements can be met efficiently ;
• it meets other medium- to long-term requirements for maintenance teams, who are responsible for ensuring that technical production resources are properly maintained: with a view to reducing costs, we need to move towards more preventive maintenance and less corrective maintenance.

Maintenance means better production. If a piece of equipment or material that is essential to the company's mission is unavailable, this leads to additional operating costs. Direct business activity can suffer the consequences, with a consequent loss of sales.

Implementing a genuine maintenance programme can support your approach to efficient equipment management, so as to increase the availability of production machinery without compromising the quality of the finished product.

Investing in preventive maintenance is synonymous with return on investment, and translates into :

• Improved productivity,
• fewer production stoppages
• reduced repair time,
• fewer wasted parts, less stock,
• better consumption and efficient management of energy.

Finally, depending on the type of equipment involved, a preventive maintenance programme may be required by occupational health and safety bodies, as part of the maintenance requirements set out in the ISO 9000 standards.

So how do you plan and implement equipment management in practical terms? Depending on the size of the company's machinery, asset management can quickly prove complex. Let's take a look at the different actions that need to be put in place in order to proceed step by step.

How do you optimise equipment management?

You're looking to optimise the monitoring and management of your equipment simply and effectively, at the lowest possible cost. You want to manage your output and increase the potential of your equipment. Maintenance is a key support function, often underestimated, but one that is growing in importance as machines become more complex.

As well as setting budgets for servicing, maintenance has a vital role to play. Not only corrective or curative maintenance, but also and above all preventive maintenance, which requires the development of a dedicated programme.

How do you set up a servicing and preventive maintenance system? How can you rationalise its management? Here are the options available to you:

Use a clear and effective nomenclature

You can start by making a precise and detailed inventory of the equipment your company owns, and in particular codify the machines and production assets.

👉 An example of a naming rule:

"Equipment name - Make - Model - Location - Machine number".

Whatever tree system you choose, the important thing is that it is legible and easily exploitable by its users, so that they can quickly identify an item and locate it geographically.

Identification allows you to centralise the makes and models of each piece of equipment and to know its precise location. This information can be integrated into management software and/or recorded on a nameplate.

Identify equipment with codes or chips

To take things a step further, you can also use barcodes, QR codes or NFC chips, which can be easily retrieved from a computer or mobile phone.

This digital identification saves time when it comes to managing interventions, particularly for service providers or any other maintenance operator who is not yet familiar with your equipment.

Closely monitor the lifecycle of your equipment

Once your equipment is clearly listed, you will benefit from keeping a record of the movements and actions undertaken on your equipment pool. This will enable you to ensure constant monitoring and full traceability of the use and condition of each piece of equipment.

Ultimately, it's the entire life cycle of the equipment that needs to be tracked: its location, the status of its use by operators (in operation, in stock, etc.), its maintenance history, its assignment to a given project, its documentation, its accessories and spare parts, and so on.

Thanks to all this data, carefully collected and logged, you can improve the safety and availability of your equipment.

Provide users with access to documentation and procedures

As soon as you create equipment documentation, with serial numbers, status, date of last maintenance, etc., it is in your interest to provide easy access to this information.

You can use dedicated tools, such as :

• an equipment tracking data sheet;
• a maintenance sheet or a machine maintenance follow-up sheet;
• service reports, service orders or work orders, etc.

The aim is to collect all the data and technical characteristics of the equipment required for maintenance, as well as the history of the operations carried out, which will be used both by the company's departments and by external parties. The technical data sheets will be expanded and revised regularly as part of a continuous improvement process.

For efficient work management, procedures need to be streamlined and known by everyone. For orders for parts to be changed, for example, the process can be simplified by reducing the number of people involved. Indeed, it is sometimes the validation system during a purchasing process that can prove long and costly.

Create a preventive maintenance programme

The measures to be put in place can form part of a maintenance programme, which structures and organises the maintenance work to be carried out. To minimise the failure of each machine, inspection periods and frequency must be defined: either using the manual supplied by the manufacturer, or on the basis of breakdowns and repairs that have already taken place, or on the basis of observations made by maintenance staff.

An order of priority can also be established according to the "criticality" of the maintenance:

• health risks
• production stoppage
• deterioration in quality
• environmental hazards, etc.

In addition to the frequency of maintenance, there are other factors to consider, such as the type of maintenance, the allocation of staff to maintain the equipment, the scheduling of work, etc.the resources responsible for monitoring and implementing the maintenance programme.

Mistakes to avoid when managing your company's equipment

When it comes to managing your equipment, there are many mistakes you can make that can be costly. Here are some of the most common mistakes to avoid making.

1. Don't ignore preventive maintenance: It will help you avoid unexpected and costly breakdowns. And lower maintenance costs.
2. Train your users regularly: Skilled operators are the guarantee of well-maintained work tools.
3. Choose the right equipment management software: An ergonomic tool that collects the right data saves you time and money.
4. Make data your friend : With the right tool, you can use the information gathered to plan major maintenance periods in advance - handy for planning machine stoppages in advance!
5. Update your inventory regularly : you'll avoid redundant purchases and optimise your resources.
6. Have a clear system for assigning equipment : for better team cohesion and maintenance that's never put off.
7. Don't neglect Personal Protective Equipment (PPE): here too, make sure you manage inventory, training, maintenance and inspection .
   1. Keep up to date with the latest regulations on personal safety.
   2. Having clear procedures in place in the event of equipment failure is recommended.

CMMS software to make management easier

What are the expected benefits of computer-aided maintenance management software? A dedicated software solution offers many advantages when it comes to managing your company's equipment and systems.

The benefits of CMMS software

Equipping your organisation with an information system designed to address these issues means you can :

• Reduce costs and save time: all the essential information is centralised in the solution and can be tracked using a calendar;
• Increase productivity: time spent on administrative tasks is freed up to concentrate on other tasks;
• Proactive planning of preventive maintenance visits: production downtime is reduced and equipment uptime is maximised;
• knowledge and organisation of equipment: identifying and monitoring the condition of the equipment as a whole enables better supervision, to control and manage risks;
• Improved management: faster, more relevant interventions, with faster response times;
• lifecycle supervision and compliance monitoring for the entire fleet of machines: traceability of all changes, history of interventions, etc.

Now it's a question of equipping yourself to work with the right tools. What software can you use to manage your maintenance activities effectively? Here are a few examples.

Our software selection

This comparison table shows all the software discussed in this article. All prices were updated in April 2024.

Altair Enterprise

Altair Enterprise is a CMMS solution based on web technology, accessible from any browser and featuring almost 250 functions. Flexible and scalable, it can be adapted to your organisation's needs, enabling you to manage all your equipment and maintenance data, including schedules and requests for service.

inoteam.co.uk

The strengths of Altair Enterprise :

• user rights management and screen customisation,
• software designed by experts in the field,
• an ergonomic, user-friendly interface.

Dimo Maint

Dimo Maint is a complete computer-assisted maintenance management software package. In terms of equipment management, it offers a global view of your assets: all the information concerning your equipment is accessible, from the technical description to the work carried out, via the accounting data.

Dimo Maint

The strengths of Dimo Maint :

• unlimited number of levels in the tree structure,
• history of equipment movements and allocation,
• preventive maintenance management, with an alert system.

Ermeo

When it comes to monitoring your equipment, consider the Ermeo web and mobile solution, which enables you to digitise all your operational processes in the industrial sector to improve productivity and safety.

Create inspection forms and control or audit sheets without any IT knowledge, then make them accessible to field operatives for their maintenance routinesManage and reference your assets in a comprehensive, centralised database that gives you a 360° view of the fleet's status.

Ermeo's strengths :

• provides an ergonomic, no-code editing studio for creating dynamic, interactive, pre-fillable forms that can be used without a connection;
• interfaces with a wide range of software (CMMS, EDM, BI, etc.) so you can take full advantage on the move;
• offers extensive personalised support to help you make the most of all its features.

Pricing on request.

Hector

Hector is a modular, scalable and easy-to-use inventory and equipment management software package that supports you at every stage of your business, from loaning your equipment to your staff, to periodic maintenance, monitoring your stock levels and renewing your fleet.

Whether it's your IT fleet, tools, vehicles or audiovisual equipment, Hector provides you with complete equipment management, in real time and entirely centralised. Finally, thanks to a mobile application and an open API, you can manage your equipment from any device and integrate Hector with the other solutions you already use.

Hector's strengths :

• a loan management system to track the various stages of an equipment loan in great detail : registration, preparation, assignment, receipt, return, reinstatement, breakage, handling, etc;
• real-time monitoring of the state of depreciation of assets: you can track the lifespan of each piece of equipment, based on the number of times it has been borrowed, for example;
• an intuitive, fast system for requesting equipment loans: employees make a request via the platform, and all you have to do is define the validation system: either by a member of staff, or by automated free management.

Available from €237.49 per year, or €19.95/month on an annual basis, for 100 assets tracked, with a 15-day trial.

Twimm.me

Twimm.me is a solution dedicated to property owners and managers. It enables them to obtain an overview of all the sites they manage and to view all the equipment installed within their estate, with its technical data and operating status accessible directly within the application. As a property manager, you can monitor the activity of maintenance contractors and the real-time status of planned work on your property.

Twimm

The strengths of Twimm.me :

• easier communication and exchanges between all the players involved: managers, service providers, technicians, etc., in a shared space,
• a platform that interfaces with other solutions such as ERP or accounting software,
• automatic generation of service activity reports .

Equipping yourself with the right tools can't be improvised!

Whether you're a company director in the service sector, a plant manager, a production operator, a manager or a service provider in the maintenance industry, your central concerns remain similar: you want to maximise the potential and uptime of the equipment under your responsibility, simply and efficiently.

With machines becoming increasingly complex, your approach to servicing and maintenance needs to be structured and formalised. The aim is to be more proactive and less reactive, in other words, more proactive than reactive. Maintenance is taking on a key importance that must not be overlooked.

The choice of tool will therefore be decisive: it must be flexible and adaptable to the reality of your business, depending on the type of equipment and the complexity and scale of your asset base to be managed. Similarly, you'll want software that's easy to use, scalable and backed up by high-quality support services, to ensure that it integrates seamlessly with your processes and your teams.

Don't hesitate to ask for a free demonstration or trial version of the tool you choose to test!