NEW EVENT! Cutting-edge Trends for Food Products at PACK EXPO Southeast
Discover all the latest packaging & processing solutions for food products at the all-new PACK EXPO Southeast in Atlanta, GA, March 10-12, 2025

The role of CMMS in predictive maintenance

As industry moves from reactive to proactive to predictive maintenance, computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) retains a critical role in the process.

Pfw 6032 Screen Shot 2017 06 16 At 12 03 21 Pm

From the 1980s to the early 2000s, many new software technologies, though created to serve distinct industry purposes, were largely new creations. In other words, they were not always built upon pre-existing technologies. As such they often required users to take leaps of faith to become an early adopter. But with more than two decades of modern industrial software technology development behind us, we’re beginning to see some of these early technologies playing key roles in emerging technology trends.

A prime example of this can be seen in predictive maintenance. While computing technologies have been leveraged for industrial maintenance applications over many decades now, it was the 1980s and 1990s that brought the first use of computerized maintenance management systems (CMMS) that we would recognize today. And these CMMS technologies have played a critical role in industry’s move from reactive maintenance to proactive maintenance.

Now the next step is taking place—from proactive maintenance to condition monitoring and predictive maintenance—and again CMMS remains front and center.

“A best-of-breed CMMS should allow for effective tracking, monitoring and analyzing of data related to all maintenance activities and events that occur on your equipment and assets, including preventive maintenance, corrective and repair work, inspections, calibrations and condition monitoring for predictive maintenance,” said Hannelore Fineman, executive vice president and partner at eMaint, a Fluke company.

Explaining how CMMS fits into a condition monitoring and/or proactive maintenance strategy, Fineman said, “A top CMMS solution will support tracking and reporting of condition monitoring data on the equipment and enable work orders to automatically generate when an alarm is triggered from the conditions that are being monitored—such as an increase in temperature or vibration. By using the CMMS to track data related to all maintenance activities that are being performed, the maintenance and reliability teams gain more insight into the overall health of their assets and can make better data-driven decisions to maximize uptime, reduce machine life cycle losses and life cycle costs.”

Considering the critical role that CMMS continues to play in the advance of maintenance technologies, I found a presentation by Jeff Werth of eMaint during a recent Fluke Roadshow event in Atlanta to be particularly noteworthy. The title of the presentation was “10 Keys to CMMS Implementation Success.”

During his presentation, Werth noted that implementing all 10 steps was not mandatory for CMMS success. However, he said his experience with more than 200 CMMS implementations has proven to him that these steps all constitute best practices.

Here are the 10 keys Werth highlighted:

INTRODUCING! The Latest Trends for Food Products at PACK EXPO Southeast
The exciting new PACK EXPO Southeast 2025 unites all vertical markets in one dynamic hub, generating more innovative answers to food packaging and processing challenges. Don’t miss this extraordinary opportunity for your business!
REGISTER FOR $30!
INTRODUCING! The Latest Trends for Food Products at PACK EXPO Southeast