Deferring maintenance is a common practice in maintenance management. We discussed the reasons and possible consequences of deferred maintenance here. You can also find valuable tips on how to avoid and prevent the pile-up of deferred maintenance here. In this article, we focus on the ways you can use CMMS or a computerized maintenance management system to deal with deferred maintenance.
All About Deferred Maintenance
But first, let’s review the concept at hand. Deferred maintenance is any maintenance work or task that is postponed. Maintenance managers can defer tasks for several reasons, and unavailable funds or other resources are the most common reason.
Deferred maintenance is often called backlog maintenance. Having backlogs in other business areas is healthy because having zero backlogs indicates overstaffing. But in maintenance, a backlog of tasks results in health and safety risks, increased maintenance costs, and other negative consequences.
Proper data management is the key to preventing and dealing with a pileup of deferred maintenance properly. Most maintenance departments we’ve worked with have weak data-gathering methods. And the facilities that do have sophisticated data-gathering tools don’t know how to analyze and extract valuable insights to minimize their deferred maintenance.
What is CMMS?
CMMS is software that digitizes maintenance processes like filling out monitoring forms, scheduling work tasks, requesting spare parts or materials, keeping a stock inventory, and many more. CMMS can also automate processes such as ordering stocks when they reach critical levels, generating regular analysis, issuing task reminders, etc.
How CMMS Helps Deal with Deferred Maintenance
Below are the valuable ways using CMMS can improve the management of deferred maintenance in your facility:
Improved Data Collection
CMMS provides a faster and more accurate way of gathering and organizing data in one accessible location. This way, any missed or deferred maintenance task becomes more visible, so managers or decision-makers can easily assign them top priority.
Supports Proactive Maintenance
With an accurate and real-time recording of maintenance data, managers can prioritize critical proactive maintenance tasks like preventive maintenance (PM) or predictive maintenance (PdM). CMMS lets you see which PM or PdM tasks are effective and which need improvements or revisions. PdM programs, in particular, need powerful analytical data-gathering software and are more effective when integrated into a CMMS.
Accurate Data Analysis
Supported by computerized processing skills, the analysis and reporting of data are faster and more accurate with CMMS. CMMS lets you predict asset failures based on data from predictive maintenance tools, giving you more time to schedule and execute these tasks. Furthermore, this software can help extract trends from historical maintenance data and suggest actions to improve them. By evaluating deferred maintenance trends, you identify more efficient solutions to deal with these tasks and prevent recurrence.
Optimize Management of Resources
Using CMMS helps you manage and allocate resources better to minimize deferred maintenance tasks. First off, using CMMS frees up technicians’ time with digitized scheduling and automated execution of maintenance tasks, giving them more time to execute deferred tasks. Next, with an organized digital view of the whole maintenance operations, you can allot the budget for materials, tools, and staff more efficiently.
And finally, CMMS can analyze data and help show decision-makers that increasing the maintenance budget is the best way to deal with deferred maintenance tasks, providing you more bargaining power to ask for more resources.
Use Redlist for Deferred Maintenance
Maintenance involves a varied range of tasks, from lubrication management to asset tracking, task scheduling, and inventory monitoring. You can have deferred maintenance tasks in all these areas and more. Redlist’s CMMS can take on multiple maintenance tasks because of its highly integrative, intuitive, and flexible software. You can download Redlist on your computer, tablet, mobile phone, or any compatible device, and use it right away.
Technicians, managers, and other users can use Redlist with minimal training. Its powerful processing technology and cloud-based storage also allow for accurate analysis on-demand and from any location. Redlist can help you deal with deferred maintenance and optimize other maintenance processes. Let us show you how, shedule your free demo today!
