**5. Conclusions and recommendations**

Although maintenance management and operations have significantly evolved from the use of manual to digital facilities, many of the operations of the maintenance units using CMMS tools are still operating at rudimentary levels. Generally, a typical CMMS tool has the capacity for planning and managing maintenance activities, resource management, analysis and interpretation, the contextual use of information in operational databases, the development of periodic reports, effective communication with stakeholders, performance and production improvements. However, the quality and quantity of the human capacity of the users of the system influences the potential of the CMMS tool that can be harnessed and put to productive use. Three case studies were used in this chapter to illustrate the potential capacity of a CMMS tool accessed by the maintenance units. Two of them refer to maintenance units in academic institutions and the third to a manufacturing company. In the academic institutions, the CMMS module activated was underutilised, as is evident from the poorly structured periodic reports. The reports were too technical, economical in details, best understood by those who prepared the reports and not suitable for effective communication with customers. The reports were silent about what the units were doing with work requests not completed at the time of reporting or the plans for addressing backlogs or deferred maintenance. The CMMS tool was being used for reactive maintenance instead of harnessing the vast potential of the CMMS tool for proactive maintenance, which is the backbone of smart maintenance.

In contrast, the manufacturing company uses the CMMS tool for planned and breakdown maintenance operations. It included the analysis of the information in the operational database, which enabled the unit to know the impact of the MTTR on the length of downtime, machine reliability and availability in the production network. This has challenged the maintenance unit to create synergy with the finance, purchasing and store departments, to facilitate the availability of spare parts and motivate the maintenance crew to timely identify and execute repairs. The activation and contextual use of the inter-related modules of the CMMS has enabled the maintenance unit to continuously improve on the MTTR, aiming at executing maintenance activities through planned maintenance rather than through a breakdown approach. It therefore improves on the practice of JIT, which is necessary for smart maintenance.

Although considerable effort is put in and investments are made to provide modern technology to aid maintenance operations, the potential uses of this tool are not adequately harnessed by many of the maintenance operatives. The maintenance units in the manufacturing company, in contrast to those in the academic institutions, through the analysis of the operational information in the CMMS database, have taken up some of the latent and rich potential inherent in a typical CMMS tool. Furthermore, they demonstrated the relationship of the 'work order management' tool with the 'assets management, preventive maintenance management, inventory control, report management and procurement management' tools. By doing so, they highlighted the collaborative relationships between the maintenance unit and other stakeholders, such as the finance, purchasing and store departments, in inventory control of stock and the timely availability of spare parts. Consequently, improvements in the MTTR translate into improved machine reliability, which facilitates production planning, sales and market projection, achieving customer satisfaction and profitability.

It is safe to conclude that the quality of the human capacity available to operate a typical CMMS tool influences the ability to harness the inherent potential of a CMMS. Therefore, this research recommends adequate resourcing and continuous development of the human capacity for the effective operation of the CMMS.

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**Author details**

*Harnessing the Multiple Benefits of a Computerised Maintenance Management System*

Edoghogho Ogbeifun\*, Patrick Pasipatorwa and Jan-Harm C. Pretorius

Built Environment, University of Johannesburg, South Africa

\*Address all correspondence to: edobuni@gmail.com

provided the original work is properly cited.

Postgraduate School of Engineering Management, Faculty of Engineering and the

© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93732*

*Harnessing the Multiple Benefits of a Computerised Maintenance Management System DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.93732*
