Why is maintenance so important?
As part of the maintenance of machines and systems, the aim is to prevent them from failing unexpectedly over time. Regular and careful maintenance work ensures that the degree of wear and tear on the machine does not increase, thereby reducing the risk of failure. Particularly in critical areas - e.g. In the case of power supply plants, maintenance in accordance with the manufacturer's instructions is essential. In these cases, a structured operational planning is essential.
Regular maintenance is also an important aspect from a business perspective. Due to the pre-defined maintenance intervals, maintenance work corresponds to plannable activities and can be scheduled as efficiently as possible with sufficient preparation time and an early reminder - e.g. using maintenance planning software. This means, for example, that several maintenance jobs can be combined, saving travelling time and ultimately costs. Unexpected machine breakdowns, on the other hand, correspond to unplanned activities and usually have to be rectified on an ad-hoc basis. This results in significantly higher costs - e.g. due to inefficient travelling or express costs for material shipping, which can be prevented by regular maintenance.
What are the difficulties with maintenance planning?
Large number of maintenance objects
The larger the company's service division, the more customers and Maintenance objects are looked after. As a result, the overview of all due maintenance dates is increasingly lost. Added to this is the complexity of maintenance monitoring. Often it is no longer just the property that is due within a certain interval. Even subordinate components have their own maintenance cycles that need to be taken into account.
Consideration of contracts
Another difficulty for maintenance planners is the consideration of maintenance and servicing contracts and their terms. Within the contracts, customer or property-specific maintenance intervals are often defined that deviate from the standard system. In addition, the scope of the maintenance work to be carried out is often contractually agreed between the customer and the maintenance company, leading to increasing complexity.
Individualization and technical complexity
In the context of maintenance planning, it must be emphasized that not all objects are maintained at the same intervals. In particular, if the intervals are based on counter values - e.g. operating hours - are defined, planning becomes much more complex. Then other factors such as the degree of utilisation of the machines (e.g. operating hours per day) has an influence on the next due maintenance date.
Appointment coordination and route planning
As soon as the maintenance due has been determined, further difficulties in coordinating appointments and planning routes. On the one hand, scheduling usually has to be agreed with the customer in advance, and on the other, maintenance work should be grouped into geographical grids in order to minimise travel times and the resulting costs. Only software-supported planning can guarantee optimum customer satisfaction and routes.
Contact us to find out more about intelligent maintenance planning in ADASMA.
What tasks does the maintenance plan software perform?
Maintenance planning in ADASMA
With ADASMA, you can map all your customers' maintenance objects in a structured and clear manner.You can define standards that should always apply to an object type, but you can also make completely customised maintenance settings. The maintenance intervals are aggregated within maintenance plans in ADASMA. This has the advantage that you can integrate several consecutive intervals into a higher-level plan. The structure could look as follows, for example (can be customised as required):
- Every 400 operating hours: Oil change
- Every 2,000 operating hours: Standard regular maintenance
- Every 10,000 operating hours: Regular maintenance + overhaul component "A"
- Every 40,000 operating hours: Major overhaul of the object
The maintenance plans are in turn assigned to the objects. Based on the system history and taking into account the automatically calculated degree of utilisation of the property, an intelligent algorithm determines the maintenance dates due in the future.
Order management and resource planning
Once the due maintenance dates have been determined, you will be supported by ADASMA also fully supports the downstream planning process. As an operation planner, you generate orders or operations directly from the maintenance tickets. These assignments are displayed on our integrated planning board as "incomplete planned assignments". You can use the map section to further optimise the routes and ensure that no routes overlap unnecessarily, especially if there are several jobs and technicians. Finally, you can simply drag and drop the call-outs onto the appropriate service technician to schedule them.
Digital integration of service technicians
With our field service app, your service technicians receive immediate notification of the new assignment. All documents such as maintenance checklists, measurement logs, time recording and images are recorded quickly and easily via the mobile app. Finally, the resulting service report is confirmed with digital signatures and all data is transmitted to the control centre once the job has been completed. ADASMA uses the information transmitted by the service technician to predict the next maintenance dates.
Arrange a webinar appointment to find out more about the seamless Service Lifecycle Management from ADASMA.