A company’s true operational foundation is its assets.

Those assets include machines, equipment, technicians performing day-to-day tasks, and more. One of the most critical components across your facility is having equipment up and running as much as possible with little or no equipment downtime. Therefore downtime reporting becomes critical to planning, most especially to profit and loss reporting.

To keep assets operating smoothly, understanding what causes breakdowns and how often repairs are made is essential. An equipment downtime report puts this information at your fingertips.

When it comes to creating an asset downtime report, consider your options:

  • Enter downtime manually for every work order in a spreadsheet (only to wade through the spreadsheet every time another repair is needed).
  • Create a clean, searchable database of your assets with historical repair data and the location of each asset in your facility.

While an organized equipment report seems like the best option, 48% of maintenance managers still rely on manual methods like spreadsheets.

Produce equipment downtime reports quickly. Get the webinar recording, Three Reporting Strategies to Maximize Maintenance Effectiveness.

With an easy-to-understand, connected reporting system, you can produce downtime reports quickly, gather accurate and real-time data, and minimize downtime altogether.

Accruent’s computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) helps create fast, legible asset downtime reports.

Accruent – Maintenance Connection – Blog Posts - How to Create an Equipment Downtime Report in a CMMS Software System

1. Organize all equipment quickly in one place.

If your company still relies on manual asset tracking and reporting, it’s frustrating to navigate through spreadsheets. Eliminate the need for spreadsheets (with thousands of rows of assets for each location) with a functional CMMS.

When you implement a CMMS, you gain real-time visibility and insights that minimize downtime and reduce lost profits. Rather than a list, users can organize all assets in one place in a hierarchical structure for an easy-to-scan downtime report.

With a CMMS, you can add equipment to work orders as you populate the work orders. Then, you can sort by overall asset, brand or lifecycle stage, or choose to see assets by location. In one click, you can sort assets or locations by downtime to generate quick, data-driven reports for future decisions.

2. Add updates and new equipment with ease.

It can take hours or even days to update a manual asset log. Each asset has unique descriptions, needs, specifications and a location to inventory. Without a CMMS, managing new or old assets is a disorganized, manual process.

The ability to update assets immediately in a CMMS stands in stark contrast to the outdated, manual method of spreadsheet data input and reporting. A top-notch CMMS gives you drag and drop functionality to add new assets, or search and filter to find the assets quickly within your database. As a result, you get quick updates, and an easily navigable database to track your assets.

3. View historical data to implement preventive maintenance.

What if you could tackle machine downtime before it even occurs? With the proper preventive maintenance strategy, it’s possible.

In a recent study, 31% of survey respondents indicated that they plan to implement preventive maintenance to decrease future unscheduled downtime. While it would be great to predict when a breakdown occurs, it’s difficult without the right database.

With a CMMS, you can input data from the description of an asset model and past service history, and create or follow recommended predictive maintenance schedules. This functionality enables you to assign preventive care tasks automatically to available technicians – minimizing the risk of downtime before it occurs. In turn, you’ll also boost technician productivity, as preventive repairs are often less intensive and costly.

Many organizations are still performing reactive, instead of preventive maintenance, and lack the data that they need to drive decisions. You need the right CMMS to reduce costs and increase productivity while anticipating and supporting your business goals.

Move away from manual equipment reports with a top-notch CMMS. Get the webinar recording, Three Reporting Strategies to Maximize Maintenance Effectiveness.