MVP One Blog

Ten Ways CMMS Improves Maintenance Operations

chris.vavra@mvpone.com (Chris Vavra) — Mon, 15 Jun 2026 22:39:41 GMT

Manufacturing operations face mounting pressure to eliminate downtime, extend asset lifespan, and optimize maintenance workflows, which makes a CMMS essential. See 10 ways a CMMS can improve operations.

For maintenance leaders and operations executives, the question is not about digitizing asset management, but how quickly a CMMS implementation can improve uptime, reduce costs, and support long-term operational performance.

A CMMS centralizes maintenance data, automates work management, and gives teams visibility into asset health across facilities and production lines. As many industries face tighter labor markets and higher reliability expectations, CMMS adoption has become a core operational strategy for success.

Ten Ways CMMS Improves Maintenance Performance, Reliability

The benefits a CMMS provides might seem obvious, but too often, companies don’t realize how much they can enhance and streamline operations. Too often, companies are stuck in reactive mode because they’re responding to immediate customer requests. Taking a step back and understanding the benefits of investing in CMMS platforms such as MVP One can help provide a better understanding of how to strengthen operations in these 10 ways.

1. Reduced unplanned downtime. Unexpected equipment failures disrupt production schedules and increase repair costs. A CMMS helps companies enable preventive and predictive maintenance scheduling, which allows teams to address issues before assets fail. Maintenance professionals gain real-time visibility into work orders and equipment history, which makes troubleshooting faster.

2. Improved preventive maintenance compliance. Many organizations struggle to complete preventive maintenance tasks consistently. A CMMS automates PM schedules, sends notifications and tracks completion rates. Reliability experts can monitor compliance metrics and ensure critical assets receive maintenance before avoidable breakdowns occur.

3. Centralized asset information. Paper records, spreadsheets, and disconnected systems make it difficult to find accurate equipment data. A CMMS stores manuals, service history, parts lists, warranties and inspection records, creating a single repository that is accessible to those who need the information. Technicians and managers aren’t wasting time hunting for information and end up spending more time executing maintenance work.

4. Stronger decision-making with data. Technology executives need reliable data to allocate budgets and prioritize capital investments. A CMMS provides dashboards and reports on asset performance, labor utilization, downtime trends, and maintenance costs. That data becomes valuable insights for executives because they get a better understanding of what is and isn’t working. Getting a clearer picture helps them align their maintenance strategy with business goals.

5. Optimized labor productivity. Maintenance teams often lose time to manual scheduling, duplicate paperwork, and reactive work. A CMMS streamlines work order management and technician assignments. Supervisors can balance workloads and track labor hours, which helps maintenance departments optimize their existing staff and avoid unnecessary coverage gaps.

6. Enhanced spare parts and inventory control. Poor inventory management leads to emergency purchases and excess carrying costs. A CMMS can track inventory and reorder in real time. Maintenance and procurement teams can ensure critical parts are available when needed while reducing unnecessary inventory spending.

7. Supported regulatory compliance and audits. Industries such as wastewater, food processing, utilities, and manufacturing face strict regulations. A CMMS creates a digital audit trail of inspections, maintenance activities, and corrective actions. This lets compliance managers and executives produce documentation during audits and demonstrate adherence to safety and operational standards.

8. Improved equipment safety and risk management. Well-maintained equipment is safer equipment. A CMMS helps organizations schedule safety inspections, track corrective actions, and document hazardous work procedures. Maintenance professionals can reduce the likelihood of equipment-related incidents and create a safer working environment for employees and contractors.

9. Enhanced mobile maintenance operations. Modern CMMS platforms support mobile devices, allowing field technicians to receive real-time information to make their jobs easier. Having this compatibility reduces paperwork delays and improves communication between field technicians and operations teams in the field because crews can complete work faster and more accurately.

10. Accelerate digital transformation and predictive maintenance. A CMMS is often the foundation for broader reliability and Industry 4.0 initiatives. By organizing asset data and maintenance history, companies can effectively integrate condition monitoring, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and predictive analytics. Reliability leaders gain the data structure needed to move from reactive maintenance to a proactive, data-driven operation.

CMMS Benefits for Companies, Professionals

For Maintenance Technicians: A CMMS reduces administrative burden and improves day-to-day execution. Technicians can access accurate asset information instantly, complete work orders digitally, and spend more time performing maintenance instead of managing paperwork.

For Reliability Experts: A CMMS delivers the historical data and performance metrics needed to identify and analyze failures and recurring issues so they can optimize maintenance strategies. Trends in downtime, mean time between failures and preventive maintenance effectiveness become easier to measure and improve.

For Executives and Tech Leaders: A CMMS provides operational visibility and turns maintenance activity into measurable business intelligence. Organizations can connect maintenance performance to production reliability, safety outcomes, and financial performance.

As industrial operations become more complex, CMMS software is evolving from a maintenance tool into a strategic operational platform. Companies that invest in structured asset management and data-driven maintenance are positioning themselves for greater reliability and stronger long-term performance.

Experience Greater Mobility, Results with MVP One

For modern CMMS platforms, mobility and flexibility are essential to keep top-performing maintenance teams stay efficient and profitable despite shifting needs.

MVP One has mobility built into its core. Our CMMS gives you predictive maintenance tools proven to reduce downtime while empowering your people with streamlined workflows and stronger collaboration.

Schedule a demo and start building a maintenance strategy that’s reliable regardless of situation and environment.

MVP One Blog | Optimize System Changeovers in 6 Easy Steps

MVP One — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 06:00:00 GMT

A successful system changeover makes the difference between on-time production and complete halts.

Recently, our Customer Success team visited a site that produces 150+ supplement products on three assembly lines. This seems overwhelming, but most plants cannot dedicate a single system to every item they sell.

This challenge spans industries from supplements to apparel and beyond. Consider a clothing brand that uses the same line to produce synthetic and cotton garments. Even without oversight from regulatory bodies, factors such as fiber contamination and incorrect labeling can severely damage brand integrity.

How do big-name manufacturers ensure quality when their machines are calibrated for multiple products and specifications? Through a detailed system changeover process.

Daily changeover activities aren't foolproof on their own. Compliance is at risk every time, especially for industries adhering to strict FDA manufacturing regulations. Procedures must be thoroughly documented and QA'd for efficacy.

Instead of building changeovers on gut feelings, a CMMS can help maintenance managers plan changeovers around specific equipment needs and regulations to stay GMP compliant.

Why Changeover Times Matter

A system changeover is the process of transitioning assembly line equipment from producing one product to another.

Using our supplement customer as an example, let's say they use the same line to produce a powdered multivitamin on Monday and a protein blend on Tuesday. Before firing up the machines on Tuesday, the team must perform full line clearance.

Think of it like washing a dirty plate before eating again. The technician will clean any remaining residue and contact surfaces to prevent cross-contamination and verify that no allergens are present from the previous batch. Aspects like fill weights and packaging are also reconfigured here, preserving product integrity and consistency.

Changeover processes are essential for consumer safety, but they also take effort and maintenance resources. In a competitive manufacturing landscape where speed-to-market is everything, even small delays can lead to missed deadlines and slower sales.

In a 202 case study of a major European food manufacturer, the company was experiencing significant losses due to long, inefficient changeover times. Their machine operators mainly relied on memory for protocols, causing different steps to be taken between shifts. The outcome: unexpected downtime and wasted materials.

Output of a production line with poor quality changeover equipment - Stapelbroek, Martijn, Onur A. Kilic, Ying Yang, and Dirk Pieter Van Donk. 2024. “Eliminating Production Losses in Changeover Operations: A Case Study on a Major European Food Manufacturer.” Production Planning & Control 35 (8): 794–807. doi:10.1080/09537287.2022.2136041.

Their downfall wasn't the lack of a changeover process; it was documentation. When structured tasks were mapped out in their CMMS, the company could standardize instructions while identifying activities that didn't add value.

These changes solidified measurable improvements beyond their problem areas. On top of reducing changeover times and food waste, scheduling accuracy and line utilization also saw a boost from CMMS-driven communication.

How a CMMS Fills System Changeover Gaps

Proper sanitization is crucial for any machine producing consumable goods. However, changeovers are more complex when part replacements and reconfigurations are involved.

A CMMS streamlines necessary activities in a guide for faster, easier execution.

Let's revisit our supplement customer. If this company produces fish oil tablets on Wednesday and a vegan collagen powder on Thursday, extreme caution must be exercised to prevent cross-contamination and meet sustainability claims.

Here's where MVP One becomes a strategic advantage in system changeover compliance.

Equipment Health Baseline: MVP One tracks asset performance and flags wear-and-tear trends. This indicates which machines are due for service before it impacts changeover quality.
Cleaning and Replacement Schedules: Preventive maintenance schedules are built into the software, ensuring cleaning and part swaps happen consistently. Seamlessly identify what steps to take when switching between materials with different compliance requirements.
PM Automation with Checklists and Instructions: Technicians receive automated work orders triggered by tailored alerts. The instructions and compliance prompts in each work order template reduce human error and expedite execution.
Real-Time Communication: Every action taken during a system changeover is logged instantly through features like statuses and Huddle. Enhance cross-team visibility with digital sign-offs before the lines start running again.
Audit Histories and Compliance Adherence: MVP One maintains a full audit trail, demonstrating ongoing adherence to internal quality standards, external FDA manufacturing regulations, and sustainability certifications.

Creating a System Changeover Process

A detailed system changeover process doesn't just protect brands. It's designed to keep teams on the same page for equipment upkeep as product demand soars.

With a CMMS like MVP One, plants can retrofit their changeover PMs to match labor and inventory availability. This ensures operations run at maximum capacity with minimal waste.

If a plant aims to uphold compliance within lean resources, the flexible planning and scheduling workflows in MVP One are the perfect starting points.

MVP One's Ultimate Changeover Checklist

Preparation
1. Review Work Order History: Our work module saves every work order created for an asset. Maintenance leads and technicians can assess this information to create a baseline for equipment health and strategize changeover job plans.
2. Generate Changeover Work Orders: Create a daily, weekly, or monthly PM depending on product rotation frequency, then set due dates to alert teams of upcoming downtime.
3. Create Role-Based Alerts: Attach People IDs to ensure someone with the right skills is available for changeover repairs. These technicians receive custom alerts when they're needed to perform a changeover PM.
4. Verify Part and Inventory Availability: Add part and inventory IDs in automated PMs to check availability before working. Technicians can also see if necessary parts are running low to facilitate reorders and reduce part-related downtime.
Line Clearance and Cleaning
1. Work Instructions for Line Clearance: Maintenance planners can add step-by-step cleaning and replacement instructions to each work order. Photos and manufacturer manuals can also be attached for further clarification.
2. Removing Product-Specific Materials: To begin line clearance, all product-specific materials need to be cleared, such as labels, packaging, and ingredients unique to the previous product. Follow work order instructions to verify the correct removal steps have been taken.
3. Changeover Cleaning Procedure: Once product-specific materials are removed, the full line can be cleaned and sanitized. With MVP One's changeover work orders, cleaning materials can be added to each piece of equipment in a system for easier tracking.
4. Logging Completion: Cleaning and replacement steps can be added as checkboxes to instructions and marked complete as the technician works.
Cross-Contamination Prevention and Allergen Control
1. Residue Inspection: Before reconfiguring equipment specs for the next product, technicians should inspect all contact surfaces for leftover residue. MVP One allows maintenance planners to include inspection checkpoints throughout instructions to evaluate cleaning quality.
2. Documenting Control Measures: Any allergen control or sanitation protocols (such as separate cleaning materials or tools) should be documented in system changeover work orders. Our system provides attachment options to log these measures for future audits.
3. Visual Inspection and Swab Test: Technicians should perform visual inspections and swab tests to verify full residue removal. Results can be recorded directly in our CMMS as an attached test report, supporting full day-to-day compliance with FDA manufacturing regulations.
Equipment Reconfiguration
1. Adjust Machine Settings: Once inspections are cleared, machine parameters can be updated to match the next product's requirements. Document the asset's settings in the work order's configuration notes for traceability.
2. Replace or Recalibrate Tooling: Swap out product-specific tools like nozzles, molds, blades, seals, and more, then recalibrate sensors or controls. Add these tasks to PMs with part IDs and calibration instructions to ensure assembly consistency.
3. Update Configuration Records: After completing reconfigurations, technicians can log adjustments in MVP One to ensure future system changeovers are based on accurate, up-to-date settings.
Compliance Documentation
1. Attach GMP/FDA Documentation: Include any relevant regulatory documents (SOPs, cleaning logs, validation forms, etc.) as an attachment. These guidelines can be added to any work order, making it easy to centralize compliance records for every system.
2. Technician Sign-Offs: Require digital sign-offs from technicians and maintenance managers to confirm each step was completed according to protocol. Our mobile interface enables real-time sign-offs to track changeover progress instantly between sites.
3. Log Audit Trail: Every action taken over changeover is automatically logged into MVP One, creating an airtight audit trail. This supports internal reviews and external inspections, solidifying complete transparency.
Final QA
1. Run First Article Inspection: Before full production resumes, run a first article to confirm inspections and recalibrations were done correctly. Log results in the changeover work order and link them to any QA documentation.
2. Verify Labeling and Packaging: Double-check that all labeling and packaging components match the new product specs. Include visual references and checklist items to confirm accuracy.
3. Close Work Order: Once all tasks are complete, the technician and manager can close the work order. After the work order is closed, MVP One automatically updates the asset's maintenance history.
4. Follow-Up Reporting: Managers can generate changeover activity summaries at whatever cadence they prefer to identify labor usage, part check-out, or compliance improvements.

Critical themes in reducing changeover losses - Stapelbroek, Martijn, Onur A. Kilic, Ying Yang, and Dirk Pieter Van Donk. 2024. “Eliminating Production Losses in Changeover Operations: A Case Study on a Major European Food Manufacturer.” Production Planning & Control 35 (8): 794–807. doi:10.1080/09537287.2022.2136041.

Win the High-Stakes Game of Product Variety With Smart Changeovers

Manufacturing is an ever-changing playing field. With the right CMMS, any plant can build a system changeover strategy that keeps pace with competitors, even when operating with fewer production lines.

MVP One helps maintenance teams of all sizes stay agile without sacrificing quality or compliance. By automating PMs and standardizing changeover procedures, complex processes are documented and streamlined for easy, clear execution.

Whether your plant creates supplements, food, clothing, or any other consumer good, MVP One ensures your equipment is clean and compliant for every production curveball.

Need to supercharge changeovers fast? Schedule a demo or test MVP One on your equipment with a free trial!

MVP One Blog | Is Your Reliability AI a Liability?

MVP One — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 06:00:00 GMT

AI for maintenance is everywhere. "Should we use it?" isn't the question anymore. Managers are all in with predictive technologies.

AI provides a budget friendly way to manage assets. However, it's held back by static data that lacks context. Alerts are vague, and priorities are unclear. If data isn't updated often, small mistakes can lead to big problems.

The solution isn't smarter tools; it's smarter collaboration between people and AI. As my team and I at MVP One call it: "Asset Intelligence."

Your People = Your Biggest Asset

My business development team recently spoke with a plant using MaintainX for AI-generated PMs. Their maintenance planner flagged concerns about lubrication scheduling. He noted that a few missing grams of lube could reduce machine lifespan over time.

If the planner missed that detail, the AI would've kept scheduling tasks with bad data. Later, those errors could cause early wear and surprise breakdowns.

AI can predict, but it can't see what your team sees.

In Asset Intelligence, people and technology matter equally. Skilled technicians understand how machines operate and what factors affect performance.

Without their judgement, even the smartest technologies create more risks.

Where Reliability AI Becomes a Liability

AI can review data between tasks and estimate when machines need preventive repairs. This creates another line of defense against downtime. However, there's still a learning curve between out-of-the-box models and reality.

Lack of Context

Technology doesn't immediately know how a specific plant or facility works. It might miss small but important details, like the right type of lube for a machine or how humidity affects equipment.

Confusing Logic

Some AI systems give alerts without explaining why. This makes it hard for teams to trust warnings or assign the right resources. If no one understands the AI's decisions, it's tough to hold anyone accountable or improve processes.

Overreliance on Old Data

AI learns from past breakdowns instead of up-to-date data. It can miss changes, such as new assets or revised instructions. It might make outdated predictions that don't match what's currently happening.

Poor Inclusion in Daily Workflows

AI alerts can feel out of sync with how teams work. If the system doesn't support maintenance plans or priorities, people might ignore it. That's a missed chance to improve both operations and AI outputs.

Risk Blindness

AI treats every issue the same unless it's taught to prioritize. It might flag a minor problem with the same urgency as a major safety risk. Without human judgment, teams might miss serious safety threats to consumers and employees.

Overlooking Technician Know-How

AI only knows what it's told. It can't replace the experience of skilled technicians who know a machine's quirks. When human feedback is built-in, AI becomes a tool for collaboration instead of replacement.

Shifting to Asset Intelligence

A 2025 Deloitte survey found that 80% of manufacturing executives plan to allocate at least 20% of their budgets to AI and automation tools. Yet, Plant Engineering reported that 88% of plants still rely on preventive maintenance as their primary strategy.

That contrast says a lot. Even with increased AI spending, leaders and teams are still disconnected. The irony is that everyone in the plant or facility (from managers to technicians) is working toward the same goal: efficiency and uptime.

Asset Intelligence is how we close that gap.

Get Everyone Involved

Technicians
1. Check AI suggestions against real conditions.
2. Catch small details like lubrication and wear.
3. Share feedback to make AI outputs more accurate.
Maintenance Managers
1. Fit AI suggestions into current schedules.
2. Decide what tasks are most important based on risk.
3. Turn alerts into clear work orders.
Planners/Schedulers
1. Balance AI tasks with preventive work.
2. Adjust timelines when priorities change.
3. Keep workflows smooth and organized.
Inventory/Purchasing Managers
1. Plan ahead for parts using AI insights.
2. Cut down on emergency orders.
3. Keep downtime low with inventory control.
IT and Data Teams
1. Keep systems secure and connected.
2. Validate AI works with CMMS and sensors.
3. Handle updates and fixes quickly
Leadership
1. Set clear goals for AI and people working together.
2. Support training and adoption.
3. Track results for both technology and team impact.

Technology: A Tool for Teamwork

I've seen maintenance technology evolve from pre-smartphone barcode solutions to PLC/IoT. One thing hasn't changed: reliability starts and ends with people.

AI is a powerful catalyst, but it's not the finish line. Asset Intelligence is the real key to efficiency and accuracy.

New tools won't replace your team; they'll help them do their best work. When people and AI work together, plants get ahead instead of just keeping up.

That's the promise of MVP One and Asset Intelligence: turning data into decisions that drive real results.

Learn how MVP One makes reliability happen with Asset Intelligence.

MVP One Blog | Asset Intelligence: A Smarter Path to Operational Efficiency

MVP One — Mon, 05 Jan 2026 06:00:00 GMT

For high-performing operations, Asset Intelligence is the difference between collecting data and actually using it to prevent breakdowns.

At its core, Asset Intelligence means collecting and analyzing equipment data (both past and present) to build maintenance strategies. It's a term you'll hear more as AI becomes common in maintenance.

AI tools alone aren't enough to make strategies work in real life. People are what make Asset Intelligence powerful.

Whether you want fewer failures or better asset utilization, Asset Intelligence helps technology spot patterns that teams can turn into clear, proactive maintenance plans.

How Does Asset Intelligence Work?

Traditional enterprise asset management (EAM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are great for budgets, but they often miss what matters most: keeping assets running longer.

Tracking repair costs and dates can't tell you why failures happen or what's next. That's where Asset Intelligence steps in.

When combined with a CMMS, Asset Intelligence connects the dots between usage trends, maintenance history, and equipment conditions. Instead of just storing data, your system evaluates trends and recommends actions.

Maintenance teams already rely on CMMS to organize operations, but Asset Intelligence takes those workflows to the next level.

By analyzing real-time and historical data, Asset Intelligence helps maintenance personnel prioritize tasks and plan resources based on what's actually happening with each asset. That means fewer surprises, better time usage, and more reliable equipment.

Collect Data from Multiple Sources

A CMMS can pull data from IoT sensors, PLCs, work orders, ERP systems, and more. This gives your team a full picture of how each asset is performing with context.

Data Structuring and Analysis

Once data is collected, it's cleaned and organized for planning and scheduling. A CMMS makes it easy to find what you need, so technicians and managers can make quick, informed decisions.

Root Cause Connections

By analyzing repair history, Asset Intelligence uncovers patterns and recurring issues. This helps teams fix problems at the source instead of chasing symptoms.

Automate Responses

When conditions change, your CMMS can trigger work orders and automatically adjust schedules. Technicians also influence outputs by verifying alerts and adding context for clearer guidance.

The Results

Asset Intelligence makes maintenance smarter and more collaborative.

Technicians, planners, and managers all benefit from cleaner workflows and less guesswork. Leadership gains confidence in reliability and compliance. Customers enjoy better quality with fewer delays.

Studies show the big impact: maintenance strategies built around real-time analytics can cut capital spending by up to 40%.

But the real win? Teams spend less time reacting and more time improving processes.

MVP One makes these wins easier to achieve by turning insights into action. Our CMMS blends advanced analytics with the way your team already works.

By simplifying complex data and supporting collaboration, MVP One helps everyone involved in operations improve reliability without huge process overhauls.

Clarify Maintenance Plans

With MVP One's asset management tools, teams can organize assets by location, inventory, and schedules. This helps operational leaders see what needs attention and connect asset data to your plant or facility's priorities.

Predict Issues Before They Happen

You don't need a complicated alert system to know how your assets are doing. MVP One collects IoT and PLC data as equipment runs. When patterns show possible failures, the system creates a work order automatically.

Know When to Repair and Replace

Don't replace a high-value asset just because it's old. MVP One helps you decide based on real-time performance, so you get more value from every dollar and more confidence in extending asset lifespan.

Connect Without Complexity

MVP One works with your existing ERP, EAM, BI, or HR systems. No need to change your operations or build custom integrations. Our system shares information with yours to keep data accurate and IT overhead low.

Get the Best of Asset Intelligence With MVP One

As enterprises and customer demand grow, Asset Intelligence isn't just "nice to have." It's how top-performing maintenance teams stay efficient and profitable despite shifting needs.

MVP One has Asset Intelligence built into its core. Our CMMS gives you the predictive maintenance tools proven to reduce downtime while empowering your people with streamlined workflows and stronger collaboration.

Don't just collect data, put it to work with MVP One. Get a demo and start building a reliability strategy that sticks.

MVP One Blog | 5 Facility Maintenance Tips That Every Maintenance Manager Should Know

MVP One — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 15:07:05 GMT

Investing in a Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS) will result in a swift ROI.

Scheduled maintenance, managed inventory, inspections, predictive tasks, and other capabilities can prevent and preempt problems before they become costly breakdowns. Downtime is costly, but you can avoid it if you are using your CMMS software to it’s full potential.

5 Time and Money-Saving Tips to Maximize CMMS ROI

Apply SOPs to everything you possibly can: Optimize the way you submit, process, and check out work orders. Use your CMMS software to keep track of ordering and receiving spare parts. Standard Operating Procedures will help you streamline your facility maintenance.
Standardize your data formats: This means establishing one style for numbers on equipment, inventory, and work orders. Pay attention to nomenclature as well. There should not be more than one abbreviation for “bearing” in your system.
Manage your inventory: With good CMMS software, inventory levels and locations are available to employees at the click of a button. Reduce downtime by eliminating wasted time searching for parts and the need to pay for expedited freight. Tracking your inventory will also allow you to discover the total costs of spare parts consumed by each machine.
Optimize your maintenance efforts: Utilize all of the tools in your CMMS software: PMs, predictive tasks, failure analysis, calibrations, inspections, meter data, PLC integration, automated work order generation, and automated inventory re-order points. These tools will all help your facility maintenance crew to increase efficiency and uptime.
Get a thorough audit of your CMMS software: Thoroughly auditing your CMMS software is the fastest way to see where you are not using it to it’s full potential. Take a detailed at what kind of data you are pulling from your facility and how you are using it in reports. The better your reports are, the more you will be in control of your facility maintenance.

It is worth your time to thoroughly analyze your CMMS software to see if you are maximizing your maintenance efforts. At MVP One, we offer full-service maintenance audits to help maximize your efficiency. To learn more, contact us today!

MVP One Blog | Why CMMS Software is Needed

MVP One — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 15:07:05 GMT

Companies make significant investments in equipment and that equipment needs to be maintained on a regular basis, just like your car, every 3 months or every 3,000 miles.

Most people have a car and know that the oil needs to be changed every 3 months or 3,000 miles. They either change the oil themselves or take it to a service shop. That’s something they can remember to do on a regular basis or they can reference the sticker on their windshield placed there by the service shop.

Most people don’t need software to remember this.

Now let’s turn to a manufacturing plant or a facility where maintenance and facilities departments are required to maintain not only one car (piece of equipment), but 100s if not 1000s. And, all of that equipment is not the same equipment type (car) - most of the equipment is unique.

Even if the equipment is of the same type, each piece of equipment has its own personality and runs differently. And, not only do they have to maintain equipment on a regular basis, they have to:

Parts

Know what parts to use.
Have those parts in stock and available.
Know where the parts are located.

Tasks

Know what tasks to perform.

People

Have personnel trained and / or certified on performing those tasks.
Have personnel available to perform those tasks.

The above list is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to equipment maintenance. What about all the emergency and requested work that is performed? The list of variables keeps growing and variables upon variables upon variables make it impossible to efficiently maintain equipment without CMMS / EAM software.

It's mind boggling that maintenance and facilities departments are not only tasked with maintaining equipment without the proper tracking tool (CMMS / EAM software), but they are required to report on it. If there is no system in place to capture data, reporting is manual, time-consuming and precise reports are next to impossible.

Without CMMS / EAM software, time and money is wasted, the inventory beast runs amuck, and downtime and frustration prevails.

The bottom line is that maintenance is a game of chess and CMMS / EAM software is required to win and checkmate the opposing forces (costs, downtime, part shortages, customer dissatisfaction, etc.)

MVP One Blog | Well-Equipped Maintenance Teams Increase Bottom-Line Profits

MVP One — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 15:07:05 GMT

In 2000, I started CMMS Data Group, now MVP One, for the sole purpose of helping MP2 CMMS Software users (CMMS = Computerized Maintenance Management System). I wanted to make the lives of maintenance teams easier by making MP2 easier to use.

Why? Because while working as a Datastream MP2 CMMS training consultant from 1998-2000, every time that I left a plant (after a week’s long training class), if I didn’t hear the following words, I saw them in their eyes:

“How do I get the data into the system?”
"What are other plants doing?”
"Can you come back and help?”

To answer the question, “Can you come back and help,” and to provide a solution, I started MVP One in 2000. To answer the question, “How do I get all the data into the system,” and to provide a mobile CMMS app, I built MVP Capture, now MVP One Mobile CMMS, the same year.

After MVP Capture Mobile CMMS was released, I was repeatedly asked, “When are you going to write you own CMMS software?” To answer that question (which was beyond my wildest dreams), MVP Plant CMMS software, now MVP One CMMS Software, was launched in 2008. (And for the last 5 years in a row, MVP One CMMS Software won Plant Engineering's Product of the Year award and was just nominated again this year!)

How a Maintenance Department Adds Value to Your Entire Organization

Since 2000, I always thought our products and services provided value only to maintenance departments. However, it was not until recently, in November of 2022 to be exact, that I began to realize that the value that we have been providing doesn’t stop at the maintenance department, it only begins there.

Achieve Operational Reliability with Maintenance Audits

Since 2018, our team of reliability engineers have been performing our version of maintenance audits.

As we rolled out MVP One to our 3 distribution centers, we knew that we needed to set standards (to have apple-to-apple metrics) and devise a plan to achieve our goals. Using their extensive knowledge and adapting it to MVP One, MVP One’s reliability services set the standard, giving us a step-by-step plan to achieve our goals.

-Brian Poveromo, Senior Facility & Maintenance Manager, American Eagle Outfitters

Last year, to clarify our marketing message, I asked “Why do we perform maintenance audits? Is it specifically to achieve maintenance excellence? Is it to improve asset performance? Is to maximize plant profitability? Why the heck do we do it?”

I kept asking these questions and on November 18, 2022, I was sent the following slide (which will be added to the next edition of Maintenance & Operational Reliability: The 24 Essential Building Blocks).
‍

It hit me like a lightning bolt and began to sink in. With Don Nyman’s knowledge and help, I learned that we perform maintenance audits to enable maintenance departments to achieve maintenance excellence. When a maintenance department achieves maintenance excellence, they are enabled to deliver reliable asset capacity to Production which translates into operational reliability.

Operational Reliability Increases Bottom-Line Profits

When Production receives the gift of operational reliability, production schedules can be met at the targeted quality level and manufacturing cost. This not only makes external customers happy, but internal customers too!

Equipment isn’t failing, stress levels aren’t rising, overtime isn’t accrued, profits aren’t shrinking, and chaos isn’t the name of the game. Customer satisfaction is the name of the game and is what enables companies to remain competitive, profitable, and in business.

WOW! I couldn’t believe it! We’ve not only been helping make the lives of maintenance men and women easier, but we’ve also been helping manufacturing organizations remain competitive, profitable, and in business.

So be nice to Maintenance and give them the tools, support, resources, respect, and recognition they deserve and need to be successful because the profitability and longevity of your business depend on them.

Let MVP One Help You Improve Your Plant’s Bottom-Line Profits

Regardless of the CMMS/EAM software that you use (or don't have), Contact Us today to start (or accelerate) your maintenance excellence journey and improve bottom-line profits!

MVP One Blog | Reduce Downtime and Increase Profitability with Preventive Maintenance

MVP One — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 15:07:05 GMT

Too many facilities choose to operate at the mercy of their equipment, running for as long as possible until the system fails instead of performing routine, planned maintenance. Abiding by the phrase “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” many plants around the world consciously decide to run to failure (RTF) and even more simply don’t plan effective preventive maintenance.

Reactive, unplanned maintenance can have a huge impact on your bottom line and leave the operational and financial stability of your plant in doubt.

Reactive, Run to Failure Maintenance Leaves Your Facility in a Costly Limbo

If you’re not planning for and controlling when your plant’s equipment is shut down for maintenance, you can’t plan for anything else. You cannot create accurate production forecasts because it’s impossible to know how long unmaintained machinery will run before it inevitably fails.

Without proper planning, the financial viability of your facility will always be uncertain. Will you be able to produce enough finished goods to pay the bills this month? RTF maintenance leaves that almost entirely up to fate.

Running to Failure Racks Up Loss

Planning in general seems to be outside the standard operating procedure for facilities operating in RTF modes. These facilities also tend to employ very little inventory planning when it comes to spare parts. Since they don’t have a good idea of the state of their various equipment, they can’t efficiently stock specialized replacement parts.

This results in two scenarios: spending a ton of money on expedited shipments of spare parts (while the plant racks up costly downtime), or wasting even more resources stocking the inventory shelves with an entire 2nd plant’s worth of parts.

A lack of regularly scheduled maintenance also means that your maintenance team will more often than not be waiting idly for something to do. That’s a lot of wasted man hours, resources that your team could better spend performing preventive maintenance instead of waiting for a breakdown and scrambling in response. Even with a repair crew on the job, there’s no telling how long a breakdown will last.

How much does an hour of downtime cost your facility in lost production? How many hours can you wait for a replacement before you start losing money? If it turns out the needed replacement is an expensive gearbox only manufactured in Germany, those expensive hours could stretch into days, if not weeks.

A temporary fix now could result in even worse breakdowns in the future, causing secondary failures through a cascading effect. How many of these incidents can you absorb before going out of business? Unplanned maintenance is detrimental to your plant and an anchor on your bottom line, but it’s possible to avoid the uncertainty of running to fail by creating an effective maintenance plan for your facility.

The Pathway to Preventive Maintenance

There’s no such thing as a perfect plan. All of the predictive data and impeccable preparation in the world can’t account for every possible scenario. But don’t let that stop you from getting started with your own plan.

There are tools at your disposal to help you start, including maintenance schedules provided by equipment manufacturers and reliable, user-friendly CMMS software such as MVP One. These assets, along with the knowledge of your maintenance team, will get you on track to slowly but surely start scheduling and planning your work.

The more downtime you schedule, the more you will know how much uptime for production you will have. At first you might be able to plan 10% of your work, then 20%. Once the ball gets rolling, momentum will build and you’ll soon find yourself on the positive side of that age-old question: are we running the plant, or is the plant running us?

MVP One Blog | Compared to Asset & Facility Maintenance, Spinning Plates is Easy (Part 2 of 2)

MVP One — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 15:07:05 GMT

(If you missed Part 1, click here to read it.)

8. Purchasing

Not only do you need to have spare parts ready and available, managers are responsible for overseeing the entire inventory and purchasing management processes. Who sets the min. / max. quantities, who creates purchases requests, who approves them, who sets up vendor relationships, who negotiates better pricing, who sends purchase requests to vendors, who receives purchased items, who puts them away, who checks out, returns, and counts parts, who notifies Maintenance that a part that they have been waiting for has been received, who analyses consumption, etc.? Spinning plates do not require inventory or purchasing management.

9. Preventive / Predictive / Condition-Based Maintenance

To keep plates spinning, all you do is spin them. With maintenance, equipment needs to be maintained on a regular basis (oil change every 3 months), failures need to be predicted, and equipment conditions need to be analyzed in order to prevent failures. As a result, multiple preventive maintenance (PMs), predictive maintenance (PdMs), and condition-based monitoring (CBMs) tasks and schedules need to be created, perfected, and managed for every piece of equipment. Plates require none of this. They just need to be packed safely away until the next show.

10. Reporting

Not only do managers have to keep equipment running and customers happy, they have to report the cost of making this happen by account, cost center, department, expense class, equipment, location, repairable spare and / or system. With spinning plates, costs aren’t tracked.

11. Uniqueness

In the world of maintenance, you never only work on one equipment or asset type. You work on many (boilers, chillers, compressors, conveyors, rooms, etc.). Additionally, within a type, there can be many different models. With spinning plates, you only have to deal with one type and model of plate. ‍

12. Minimizing Costs

And if all of the above isn’t enough, costs need to be minimized. With spinning plates, costs aren’t tracked.

Welcome to the World of Maintenance!

Managers not only have limited time, they have many more variables to deal with other than the nine variables listed above and they need a tool to help them oversee, track, and manage these variables. That tool is EAM software.

For those departments still not using an EAM, can you imagine what your company’s accounting department would look like if they ran it without accounting software? If you’re struggling to convince upper management that you need a EAM, for a starter, please share this article with them. If you are ready to start looking at maintenance tracking software, buyer beware because all CMMS / EAM / FMMS software are not alike.

On a side note, I used to use the following scenario to help managers explain to their bosses why EAM software is needed…

Ask your boss how many cars does he or she own. Then, talk about maintaining those cars. Then, compare that number of cars to the number of assets and buildings that you need to maintain to paint the picture of why a maintenance tracking tool is needed. Let’s say that your boss has 3 cars and you have 1,000 assets to maintain. Yes, you can maybe keep track of maintaining 3 cars in your head, but how in the world can you easily keep track of 1,000 assets without software?

If paper is used, how much time is wasted processing all of the paperwork. If Excel is used, how much time is spent creating reports? If nothing exists, how in the world can new hires be trained or improvements be made if nothing is tracked.

“What does not get measured does not get managed.”

This scenario starts to describe the magnitude of what needs to be maintained, but it doesn’t detail the intricacies of maintenance. This article begins to paint the picture and I hope it helps.

To maintenance and reliability success!

MVP One Blog | Is Your CMMS A Work Order Printing Press?

MVP One — Sun, 15 Jun 2025 15:07:05 GMT

A work order printing press is exactly what it sounds like; a press that prints work orders, nothing else. It is NOT a living, breathing system that organizations rely on to deliver decision support to improve equipment reliability, mitigate risk, maximize asset life, and increase overall plant profitability.

When a CMMS is ONLY a work order printing press, history never returns to the system. Without history, making improvements is difficult and what does not get measured does not get managed. Hence, the following items are never properly managed, costing organizations significant time and money:

Downtime
Equipment
Labor
Parts
Work

Therefore, it is critical to turn your work order printing press into a living decision support system that accurately tracks, at a minimum, the following work order information:

Labor: The length of time each employee worked on the equipment.
Parts: The parts used to maintain or repair the equipment.
Downtime: The number of hours the equipment was down.
Comments: The comments list what the problem was, what was done to resolve it, how to prevent it from happening again in the future, and any other relevant information.

Sounds easy, right? ABSOLUTELY NOT! Updating your CMMS with accurate work order information is difficult and burdensome, especially when information is collected manually. First, work orders must be created, printed, and assigned. Once assigned, work needs to be completed.

If parts are needed, maintenance technicians must travel back and forth to storerooms to check out and return parts. If a part is unavailable, it needs to be requested, approved, and ordered. Sometimes, techs, themselves, are responsible for placing orders via phone, fax, or email, not to mention receiving and stocking the parts, too.

Next, they must travel back to the equipment to repair or maintain it. Once the work is complete, the work order must be updated. However, what happens if information (start times, stop time, parts, etc.) is forgotten because they get called away to another job or emergency? In steps guestimates or unrecorded work.

Let's say work order activities were recorded but your department doesn't have a maintenance clerk. Without a clerk, techs, themselves, are responsible for making CMMS work order updates. Most of the time, they prefer other activities over typing. Additionally, oily and poorly lit work environments make paper and computer updates even more difficult.

Once again, manually updating CMMS software with paper work order information is not easy. Plus, techs have other HUGE responsibilities such as keeping the plant up and running, offices at comfortable temperatures, etc.

To help, I created MVP One CMMS back in 2000. Instead of taking an average of 15-30 minutes to make manual paper and CMMS updates (per work order), techs use barcode scanners to point and scan. Instantaneously, the CMMS is updated with precise work order data (without ever having to physically touch a piece of paper or a computer). Back then, I also printed sheets of barcodes for common words to make updating comments easy. Today, our MVP One Mobile CMMS users take advantage of voice to text to record comments.

If you manually update your CMMS with paper work order information and think a mobile CMMS solution is too expensive, check this out:

The Annual Cost of Manual CMMS Work Order Updates

5 Techs * 0.25 Hour / Work Order Update * 7 Work Orders / Day * 5 Days / Week * 50 Weeks / Year * $30 / Hour = $65,625 / Year (Conservative)

The Annual Cost of Mobile CMMS Work Order Updates

5 Techs * 0.08 Hour / Work Order Update * 7 Work Orders / Day * 5 Days / Week * 50 Weeks / Year * $30 / Hour = $21,000 / Year (Conservative)

Annual Savings

$65,625 / Year - $21,000 / Year = $44,625 / Year (Conservative)

Mobile CMMS solutions abolish work order printing presses, save time and money, deliver accurate work order data, and enable techs to better utilize their time. Instead of making paper and CMMS work order updates, their time is better utilized performing maintenance and preventing failures. Eliminating paperwork and data entry also increases job satisfaction.

With or without a mobile CMMS solution, create standard operating procedures (SOPs) to set the standard for work order data and maintain the integrity of it. Detail how to properly collect and update your CMMS with work order information. Then, train your techs on the SOPs and continuously ask for their feedback (to perfect the process and the SOPs).

Once your CMMS alive with precise work order history, it will be quick and easy to detect bad boy equipment and where to focus your attention, increasing asset life, reliability, and the overall profitability of your plant.

Remember, a CMMS wants to be more than just another work order printing press.

About MVP One

Founded in 2000, MVP One is the market leader in CMMS software and services. These solutions empower maintenance and reliability professionals to increase customer satisfaction, reliability, capacity, productivity, and profitability, delivering a competitive edge to their organization.