PM Worx - Learning Series
Tracking Asset Maintenance Costs
I
n your day-to-day operations, you’re constantly doing inspections and planned maintenance to make sure your
assets keep running smoothly and you don’t get caught
suffering from sudden breakdowns. No doubt, we all
agree that PM is essential to the economics of running the
physical plant. Did you know that emergencies and breakdowns cost an estimated 4% to 20% more than doing the PM
in the first place … it depends on the source but even at 4%,
it’s too expensive! And, PM is also known to prolong the overall useful life of your equipment saving even far more money
in the long run.
That being said, corrective maintenance on equipment is inevitable – things do need repair on occasion. The goal, however, is to keep this type of reactive work to a minimum as
much as possible.
Many of you may have equipment that you’re continually reacting to in order to keep it running like lifts, carts, HVAC
equipment, laundry equipment, lawn care items, kitchen
equipment, vehicles, floor scrubbers etc. This equipment
might not breakdown such that it’s inoperable, but it might
need a minor repair to help it work more effectively.
You might have an item that’s a real lemon and you do what
you can to ensure it keeps operating so you spend that 20
minutes every month to fix a nagging issue. These reactive
repairs add up and at some point, it’s wise to weigh the cost of
continuing to repair that item versus replacing it altogether.
A Real-Life Example
Let’s run through an example of a dishwasher that constantly
requires repairs and how you’d be able to use PM Worx to
analyze the time and money spent to maintain that item.
You’ve got a dishwasher in your kitchen that always seems to
have a problem. At the start of the year, you had several problems with the door latch not engaging, which prevented the
washer from starting. Then, there was a wiring problem that
affected the timer and required an outside contractor to come
in. Next there was the door seal, the heating element and then
finally the water-inlet valve. All of these jobs took time and had
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costs associated with them. By accurately reporting on what
resources were used to maintain that dishwasher, you’ll gain
valuable insight into whether it’s a better decision to replace it
rather than continuing to repair it.
PM Worx provides precisely the report you need. To create
an asset maintenance history for that dishwasher, you must
do two things. First, that dishwasher must have been entered
as an ‘asset’ record in PM Worx and second, you must link
that fixed asset record to each work order created for the dishwasher repair.
Tip:
To collect asset data
Building an Asset List
• Summer student
The key building block you
need to have in place to be • Back to work programs
• Employees on light duty
able to accurately analyze
• Mobile Worx pocket PC’s
your asset maintenance
histories is a catalog containing each asset (piece of equipment) in PM Worx. An asset record in PM Worx consists of
information like asset description, make, model, serial number, purchase date, purchase cost, warranty expiry, asset tag
# and so on. Some of you might have this information in PM
Worx. Some might have it in Excel lists or other software and
yet others of you might be rolling your eyes at the prospect of
building an asset list from scratch.
Naturally, if your asset list is already in PM Worx you’re way
ahead of the game. If you’ve got your data in Excel or in another software, you’re still in a good position because you can
contact us at Windmill and see what it would take to import
that data. Another option is to hire someone temporarily (like
a summer student) to re-key that data into PM Worx.
Speaking of students, if you’re starting from scratch, you
might also consider hiring someone temporarily for the job of
collecting your asset information too. You can set them up
with a clipboard with a template form and assign them to a
location each day where they’ll collect the nameplate data,
return to PM Worx and key it in.
For those of you doing it yourselves, you might consider using
Mobile Worx to help get the job done more quickly and easily.
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It has the ability to use your Pocket PC (handheld device) to
enter asset data directly into Mobile Worx so that there’s no
need to re-key that information.
Linking Assets to Work Orders
Once you have your equipment entered into PM Worx, you
can link them to both corrective work orders and scheduled
work orders. In the dishwasher example, you’d create your
work order (or accept the request) as usual, assign the worker
and then click the assets tab. From within the asset tab, click
the link button and select the dishwasher from the list of assets. The dishwasher is now associated with that work order.
When completing a work order with linked assets, the work
Work order
costs and labor
times are divided
among the
linked assets.
order costs and labor times are divided among the linked assets to create a complete asset maintenance cost history. In
our dishwasher example, all of the work order costs and times
are allocated to our single dishwasher record.
Reporting on Asset Maintenance History
As you link assets to work orders and begin to develop a rich
asset maintenance history you can easily report on
how much time & money is being spent to maintain
an asset. Another benefit is that you can easily look
up historical work orders and determine if a repair/
breakdown is a common occurrence and review
past resolutions to the same problem.
Here’s how I’d get that report:
• Go to Report >> Fixed Asset >> Fixed Assets Maintenance History
• Using your Assets filter, select the Dishwasher from the
pop-up list of assets.
• Enter a date range filter using W/O Call date for Jan 1,
2007 to today’s date.
• Now print or preview that report.
We can see the list of all work orders performed this year on
this report, including costs. So far this year I’ve spent $978 on
repairs to this dishwasher. This sounds bad, but it actually
gets even worse when you think about the time
lost from staff in the kitchen having to scrub
dishes the old fashioned way while the dishwasher is out of service.
Repair vs Replace Decisions
Visibility into what you’re paying to maintain a
piece of equipment over a period of time is the
key to making well-informed repair vs. replace
decisions. Looking at such a small time period
as we have in this dishwasher example probably isn’t enough information to base any decisions on. After you’ve been tracking asset
maintenance for a couple of years you’ll have
enough data to make some reasonable assumptions regarding your annual maintenance costs for your
equipment. Once you have this information you can start to
assess whether or not it’s financially sound to postpone replacement and continue to repair an asset.
The math involved in accurate repair vs. replace decisions
can get quite heady. If you’ve got your annual maintenance
Using the dishwasher example, let’s say I wanted a
history of all work performed on that specific dishwasher since the start of the year.
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PM Worx - Learning Series
costs for equipment you can then pass on this information to
your CFO and let them run the numbers. For a good example
of how the repair vs. replace decision is made, take a read
through this 2 page article from plantservices.com, http://
www.plantservices.com/articles/2003/342.html. Also, be sure
to pass the article on to your CFO letting him know that you’re
tracking this information for his financial planning.
For assistance on entering assets into PM Worx, linking
equipment to PM or corrective work orders or reporting,
please remember to use our toll-free support @ 1-877-3639679. ▄
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877.363.9679