subject: Creating a Lean Maintenance Management Culture through Group and User-Specific Software Interfaces [print this page] Creating a Lean Maintenance Management Culture through Group and User-Specific Software Interfaces
Machinery, buildings, technology and other elements of production are the physical assets of a business. The absence of any of these assets could obviously retard the productivity of a business or lead to its downfall. It is imperative to ensure that they are well-maintained and managed to avoid any sudden or unexpected breakdowns that could incur major repairs and replacement costs, as well as loss of precious time.
Survival in the Midst of Cut-Throat Competition
Enterprise asset management is all about implementing a process for optimum management of physical assets and their lifecycles. The process involves making the right decisions in the selection, design, acquisition, operation, maintenance, renewal and retirement of the physical assets. Thus, optimizing this process can be a significant factor in achieving business goals in today's competitive environment.
Value-Added Performance with Lean Maintenance
"Lean" is a concept that has been applied to manufacturing operations to reduce costs, improve the quality of production and eliminate inefficiencies in the operation of the business. Enterprises have come to understand that factors that impede business performance need to be eliminated so that processes can be streamlined and focused on continuously driving efficiency levels higher.
In the realm of Asset Management, "lean" is also defined as the elimination of inefficiencies in the maintenance management process and the preservation of optimal asset utilization and uptime. Lean maintenance eliminates all wasteful processes - including those processes that hinder user adoption of technology - to optimize and facilitate the movement of labor, supplies, and outside partners for corrective action and preventive maintenance on critical assets and plant equipment.
Best Practices for Managing Assets
Enterprises need to set up an asset management and preventive maintenance software systems that are compatible with existing applications and dataflow. The software should be capable of handling all the maintenance challenges of the organization, but also integrate with, and therefore further streamline, the organization's production or other core processes.
Application Interface Interoperability
The success of any software is dependent upon an effective application interface and overall user adoptability. A rigid or disagreeable interface will provide incomplete benefits to the user, and a complicated or cumbersome computing session will make the users reluctant to take part in the implementation. On the other hand, a user-specific application interface that provides easy to access functionality, quick response to required screens, and focused data entry forms provide a completely satisfying user experience. An open architecture application available in maintenance management software enables the integration of varied types of applications and data from existing systems. This creates a platform for the execution of intelligent strategic processes and further ROI on system investments. An ideal, properly architected, user interface is flexible and configurable, yet allows the organization overall to maintain visibility, control, and security per corporate or operations standards.
A LEAN maintenance management operation is created as information moves nearly instantaneously from one group or department to another. Each user contributes per his/her role and responsibilities quickly and, each user is able to obtain information needed to fulfill that their roles and complete their jobs and tasks with extreme efficiency.
A LEAN maintenance management operation contributes to an overall Lean enterprise - by boosting process efficiencies and ultimately minimizing unexpected downtime and operations shutdowns.
