New Maintenance Management Software Survey

New Maintenance Management Software Survey

From Software Advice CMMS Analyst Michael Koploy

Click above graph or link to see Full Maintenance Management Software Survey.

Maintenance Management Software Evolution Mirrors Maintenance Management Shortcomings 

It is most likely no surprise to those of us in the industry that maintenance management software's weaknesses mirror those generally found in maintenance management today. It also is no surprise that the softwareadvice.com suvey above shows the process industries (oil/gas/mining) report the same disatisfactions as the biggest user of maintenance management software (CMMS), the manufacturing industries. Those who follow us and have read our many articles and blog post on the CMMS industry, know we focus on pointing out the weaknesses in hope of directing the maintenance management software industry in a more productive direction.

The maintenance management software survey results mirror the industry evolution itself.  IE: Maintenance management started out managing work orders, then PMs and thus those are commonly the strong suites of maintenance management software. With predictive maintenance (PdM – like condition monitoring) tracking and reporting satisfaction lacking from most maintenance management software, because the software industry has not caught up with today’s current maintenance management methodologies.

We feel management software providers should be leading maintenance management methodologies to reduce cost, not trailing them. And if they where, that would be indicated in maintenance management software surveys. Although the industry as a whole is not yet to maintenance LSS, the software vendors should already be incorporating LSS elements within the design of their software. Also the software vendors should be designing their software with a proactive approach, not a reactive. A proactive design would increase end-user use and satisfaction as well as ROI.  Proactive in respect to the software should be designed so best-practices and full use of maintenance management software should be the default. And if the the end-user wants to optionally turn off features, not fill in in a PM comment area, the software should be discouraging them with a "Are you sure?" or "remind me in X days". (Just like consumer software such as Windows OS, MS word, your web-browser, etc. are designed to do if you decide not to fill in a field or turn off some functionality of the software.)

Please click on the maintenance management software survey graph picture above to gain more insight from the full survey.

Don (Follow me on Industrial Skills Training Blog and on Twitter @IndTraining .) Be sure to add me to your Google+ circles to stay on top!