Who is a CMMS Professional?

Asset Management from a CMMS Perspective

Asset management is the art and science of making decisions to optimize the delivery of value against established organizational objectives. That said, asset management needs a CMMS to do what it does best. A fully engaged asset management system provides answers to difficult questions, such as what assets to focus on and what are the optimum maintenance strategies.

The degree to which a CMMS can contribute to profitability is directly related to stakeholder vision and their desire for operational excellence. Unfortunately, many CMMS administrators only use the software to “track assets and manage work orders.” The true value of a CMMS is in its ability to manage by exception, but that does not happen by just installing software and implementing basic processes. Leadership needs a plan (i.e., roadmap) for leveraging data to make more informed decisions.

So, why do so many Struggle to Optimize Asset Management?

Two Worlds

There are hundreds of CMMS products and thousands of certified reliability professionals. Unfortunately, these two groups struggle to communicate. A better name would be (1) CMMS practitioners and vendors and (2) maintenance and reliability professionals. They use many of the same words in conversation but have different understandings. In addition, they have multiple internal certification programs with different objectives. Basically, the CMMS community is failing to see the significance of designing the CMMS to support reliability engineering. As a result, the CMMS community only understands managing work orders and workers. This happens because most CMMS implementations are led by technical service teams that primarily focus on data loading, application setup, and product training.

What is Your Endgame?

These two groups need to sit down and discuss ways to help each other. It would help to have an asset management roadmap that shows all the prerequisites to operational excellence.

The M&R professionals typically know what they want but are often not aware of how best to design the CMMS. If they are forced to compile/store data outside the CMMS, then this is what they will do. They may perform RCM analysis to identify failure modes and strategies but also keep this outside the CMMS. They see the CMMS community focused on the technology and building out foundation data. If asked about failure analysis, they see this as an end-user process that reviews one work order at a time. Further, they are not concerned with reducing reactive maintenance as this is not their problem. But, if these two groups were to work together, they could have an immediate impact on asset performance and profitability.

Who is a CMMS Professional?

A new role/position is needed within asset management that deserves its own accreditation. The current situation of having a software techie who is not familiar with reliability-based maintenance and an M&R professional who cannot describe what/where/how the CMMS needs to improve to support asset management needs to change.

The CMMS Professional is a reliability leader who cares about leveraging data from a well-designed CMMS to make more informed decisions regarding asset management. He supports continuous improvement as supported by ongoing benchmarking activities. He relies upon a prioritized roadmap that connects prerequisites to the endgame. The CMMS professional has yeoman's knowledge of CMMS power features, industry best practices, advanced processes that provide the greatest potential ROI, and certifications in maintenance and reliability. By integrating these two critical professions, a greater synergy is achieved.

The CMMS Professional has knowledge that CMMS R&D departments would be wise to listen to. This role/position understands CMMS functionality and advanced processes that provide the greatest potential improvement in terms of asset integrity, productivity, and job safety. He understands best practices and the prerequisites to get there. He also understands the importance of project management, change management, and reliability engineering. This vast knowledge is usually acquired over many years working across multiple industries and continents.