6 Ways document management produces more efficient and effective maintenance

An organization makes or loses money based on the uptime of their assets. Without efficient, working assets, a business merely has an expensive liability on their hands. Part of ensuring a profitable business is ensuring that assets are running smoothly and effectively. By ensuring efficient and effective maintenance of assets, you ensure an operationally sound and profitable business. In this blog, we’ll show you 6 ways to produce reliable and effective maintenance.

Why is maintenance important?

Productivity is the byproduct of best in class maintenance. Optimizing the way your business runs for production output means that more things will get done,and get done faster. Essentially, production efficiency will allow you to take advantage of a less-intensive work process that reduces resource usage, has higher output and profit margins, and allows you to provide a better customer experience.

Calculating production efficiency can be done by dividing your actual output rate by the standard output rate, and then multiplying it by 100. Take for example a manufacturing company that receives an order for 200 units. The standard rate of completion is 200 units per 12 hours, but the company took 15 hours to complete the request. In this instance, the production efficiency formula can be broken down like this:

Actual Output Rate = 200 units/15 hours = 13.3 units/hour

Standard Output Rate = 200 units/12 hours = 16.7 units/hour

Production efficiency = (13.3/16.7) x 100 = 79.6%

Proper equipment maintenance is essential for increasing production efficiency. It ensures your total effective equipment performance is as high as it can be. These are the four main ways in which maintenance does this:

Limit equipment downtime

If equipment is regularly checked, you will be able to predict problems before they occur. Having a solid preventative maintenance schedule allows you to stop big breakdowns that limit production, and allows you to coordinate with production so that planned downtime is done efficiently.

Establish a corrective system for failures

Having a strategy to find, analyze and fix allows you to target recurring issues at the root cause. Essentially, you will be able to find and eliminate problems that impact equipment availability and product quality the most.

Coordinate better shift changeovers

Better changeovers between maintenance shifts mean that the right information will be communicated to technicians quickly and accurately. This includes a rundown of what work needs to be done, when, and any obstacles they may come across during their shift.

Ensuring standard operating procedures are clear and maintained

SOPs train operators to do routine maintenance so machines can be operated with fewer breakdowns and accidents.

Document management plays a role in each of these objectives, helping you become a more streamlined, efficient, and safe operation. Below, we’ll outline 6 ways in which document management assists with your maintenance procedures.

6 ways document management produces more effective and efficient maintenance

Holistic and complete asset lifecycle documentation

Many employees spend too much time trying to access critical information contained in various platforms or applications. Additionally, the only thing worse than not having access to the right documentation is not having the documentation at all. Missing documentation in your asset lifecycle can halt entire operations or even cause a loss of revenue.

Having the ability to access and utilize documentation across other departments and applications greatly improves maintenance efficiency. Workers can access the information they need to speed up their tasks and rely upon the support of accurate documentation throughout the process.

Instant access to critical information

A large part of a worker’s day is seeking information. For every asset and task, matching documentation must be located, verified and used. The time it takes a worker to achieve this directly impacts the productivity they offer. Should they take too long to locate information or documentation, they slow the entire operation down and delay entire projects.

With efficient document management, workers can access equipment specific manuals, schematics, troubleshooting guides, procedures, and more on desktop or mobile devices. Ensuring easy and fast access to these essential documents provides robust information when and where maintenance needs it - speeding up entire workstreams.

Documentation to reduce accidents and costly injuries

Asset intensive organizations have locations with dangerous conditions. The risk of injury or accidents are ever present, and preventative measures must always take place to ensure a productive and safe environment in which to work.

Documented environmental, health, and safety protocols and procedures should always be made available to workers to prevent accidents and costly injuries. Efficient document management ensures that these documents are never far from the reach of workers, helping protect them from injury and the company from delays.

Integrated information to maintain new technology

New technology within asset intensive industries is an exciting prospect for business owners. However, increasingly sophisticated automation, robotics, and connected machinery all require extensive documentation that is cross-referenced with other information contained within different systems.

Content Management solves the rapid increases in documentation needed to maintain complex machinery and beyond capability of EAM systems alone. With effective content management systems, new technologies can access the documents and information they need automatically, helping you adapt to better and more efficient processes.

Storage and access to control systems settings and parameters.

Automation, Artificial Intelligence, integrated control systems and applications has created a need for robust content management capabilities to reduce mistakes that can cause facility shutdowns.

Document management helps businesses control these systems to maximize their effect on operations. It facilitates the storage and access of documents, systems and settings in the most efficient way for organizations to take full advantage of new technologies.

More effective training and procedures

Document management assists with operator startup and shut down procedures, inspections, and notifications. While having quick access to these documents is an advantage itself, improved documentation allows maintenance to train operators in correct procedures and problem recognition which improves maintenance and operations efficiencies overall.

With effective documentation and management, you can upskill your organization’s workforce quickly and efficiently, while having the information on hand to reference at a later stage.

In conclusion

Boosting your maintenance activities is a wise investment. It can take your company from struggling to keep up with orders to one that is efficient, effective, and profitable. Just like managing inventory of spare parts leads to faster repair times, the management of documents helps your organization be more nimble and efficient. However, setting up a document management system is something not many asset-intensive companies have the time or resources to complete on their own. Qellus can help prepare your organization, giving you the tools, expertise, and direction you need to make the most of your maintenance.

Contact us today - we’ll review your processes, optimize your systems and get you ready for streamlined success.

The 2022 Enterprise Asset Management Optimization Checklist

By downloading this checklist you will learn how to evaluate your assets, determine where you can gain value and how you can improve that value in five easy steps.