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Tis the season …

December 22, 2009 by Brian Kincaid 1 Comment

To our valued customers:

During the holiday season, it is good practice to step back and take a look at the gifts we have been given.  At Maintenance Connection, we are sure that each and every one of our customers is a gift.  As such,  our staff would like to extend a huge “Thank you!” to all of our clients who have supported us and kept us growing through the past years to become the company that we are today.

Your trust is greatly appreciated and we take it very seriously.  We cannot thank you enough for putting your confidence in us to provide you with a solid and capable piece of software that you can trust day in and day out.  We will continue to listen to your needs and develop new cutting edge technologies that will help maximize productivity and reliability while minimizing your maintenance costs.

This past year has seen some significant upgrades and improvements through versions 4.0 and 4.2.  There were many new features and innovations that came directly from you and your valuable feedback.  We look forward to hearing all of your wishes for the next release, v4.5, and being able to include as many as possible.

Again, we give you our sincerest thanks and look forward to spending 2010 with you. Hopefully, we’ll get to visit you on the MCRV Tour.

Happy Holidays

Maintenance Connection Staff

News and Updates

Profiles of Success: Towson University

August 19, 2009 by Brian Kincaid 0 Comments

profiles_of_success

Earlier this year we introduced you to the McGraw Hill company who is one of our successful customers.   The feedback they provided was directly from a survey project called “Profiles of Success”.  We have selected Towson University to be showcased in this blog post; another customer who has completed the below survey. If your organization is interested in participating in the Profiles of Success survey, simply fill out this form and we’ll include your response in a future post.

Las Vegas Training Event
Have you signed up for our Western Regional Training Seminar?  The early bird special will expire by the end of this month causing prices to increase a minimum of $100/person.  Please click on the image below to download a PDF with additional information.

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Customer Spotlight

A special thanks to Troy Lingelbach from Towson University for all of his hard work throughout his implementation and being gracious enough to provide such thorough feedback about his usage of Maintenance Connection.  I have had the pleasure of personally working with Troy on his roll-out of Maintenance Connection and should mention his continued patience and dedication is one of the main fators they have seen such outstanding results.

Survey Questions: Towson University’s Responses:
Question #1:(BEFORE)

  • What system (if any) was in place before Maintenance Connection was implemented?
  • What were some of the main business drivers for implementing CMMS?
 Response:

  • Prior to Maintenance Connection we operated 2 independent CMMS’s simultaneously.
  • The reason for running two systems was because each system served several different needs.
    • One system (Maximo) served the Academic buildings on campus.
    • The other system (which was web based), was designed and developed in-house, and served the Residential buildings on campus.
  • Our main business driver for choosing Maintenance Connection’s CMMS was because we needed a single web based system that could serve our entire campus.
    • With the Academic and Residential buildings having different requirements, this system needed to be flexible yet fully capable of providing a complete CMMS. 
  • Because of all these needs, we chose Maintenance Connection since their CMMS provided the best possible options and would produce the best end results.
Question #2:(SELECTION)

  • What were your top reasons for choosing Maintenance Connection over other CMMS options?
 Response:

  • Our top reason for selecting Maintenance Connection was because they could easily customize their CMMS to our organization and make it fit within the processes we already had in place.
  • After implementing it, we noticed the benefits of having a 100% we based CMMS software, and appreciated the fact that the system was extremely easy to use.
Question #3:(USAGE)

  • Describe the general usage of Maintenance Connection within your organization.
 Response:

  • We have two primary uses for our CMMS, which have provided strong benefits and continuous results.
    • Our Physical Plant staff uses Maintenance Connection for preventative and corrective maintenance.
    • Our Faculty, Staff, and Resident Students, on the other hand, access Maintenance Connection’s Service Requester to initiate a request for repairs.
      • This has helped out tremendously as all requests are automatically routed to the appropriate shop according to the respected problem type (a very efficient process).
Survey Questions: Towson University’s Responses:
Question #4:(RETURN ON INVESTMENT)

  • List a few improvements that your company has experienced as a result of implementing Maintenance Connection’s CMMS?
  • (Examples include: reduced downtime by 10%, decreased parts stock-outs by 25%, saved $100,000 per year in overtime)
 Response:

  • Since implementing Maintenance Connection’s CMMS, we have noticed:
    • Improved communications and relations with our customers.
    • An approx. 75% reduction in telephone calls to our Work Control Center.
      • This has drastically helped save labor cost and allowed our employees to become more productive.
      • We have also noticed improvement within our record keeping and reporting abilities.
      • We have eliminated numerous bottlenecks in the work order flow process.
      • And most importantly, we have benefited from a drastic improvement in productivity from our maintenance staff by maximizing their ability to improve areas around our campus. 
Question #5: (IMPLEMENTATION)

  • Describe your experience during implementation, from the initial purchase through “go-live.”
 Response:

  • Overall, our implementation went very well without any major issues.
  • Our account manager and the entire Maintenance Connection support team have always been available when we needed them.
  • Our system has been up and running for 2+ years without any unscheduled down times.
Question #6: (IMPLEMENTATION)

  • Do you have any suggestions for someone just beginning the implementation of CMMS?  
 Response:

  • Implementing a CMMS in your organization may require substantial changes to the way you operate.
  • When choosing a CMMS, you should carefully analyze which one will give you the ability to customize the system to ensure it can “work for you.”
    • Without this ability you will have to modify the way your organization functions in order to support the CMMS
    • (When in reality, it should be the other way around – the CMM system should customize to the organization’s needs.  This is why we chose this company for our CMMS needs).
  • Choosing Maintenance Connection has taken our organization to the next level, without causing unnecessary strains or burdens to our operations.
  • Maintenance Connection’s CMMS integrated very well with the way we work and has provided many additional benefits that we never had before.
Customer Spotlights
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Spotlight on Reports: Week 3 of 3

August 12, 2009 by Brian Kincaid 0 Comments

Last week in our spotlight on reports, we described how you can add multiple sorts, sub-grouping, and totals to your reports. This week we will be showing how to perform basic calculations within a cell of your report.

Las Vegas Training Event
The seminar details and v4.2 preview are included in the below link. Please click on the image below to download a PDF with additional information.  Many customers have already signed up and received the early bird discount – we look forward to meeting you in Vegas!

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Field Calculations:  When building a report, it can be valuable to perform calculations between fields displayed on the report.  In order to accommodate this, Maintenance Connection includes a “Custom Expression” box for each field added to the report (see below).  This box can be accessed by clicking a Display field and subsequently clicking the Edit button under the Display list.

CustomExpressionBy setting the “Custom Expression?” radio button to “Yes”, this allows a user to specify the exact output they desire from this field on the report.   Users may enter the table.fieldname and use standard mathmatetical operators (*,/,+,-) to create a new value.  For example, to calculate the difference between the WO Target Hours and Actual Hours, the following may be populated into a Closed WO List report:  wo.targethours-wo.actualhours

Report

Tip: When using custom expressions, it is advised to rename the field to be more descriptive of the results it will return and to also update the Field Type to match what you are displaying.  See the Field Label (Custom) has been updated to “Hours Difference” and the Field Type (Custom) has been updated to “Numeric”. 

Field Options

An additional Custom Expression that is extremely useful, utilizes some basic SQL coding.   The below SQL will calculate the response time (in days) between the Requested and Complete dates recorded on the work order: datediff(day,wo.requested,wo.complete).   This script may easily be modified to accommodate minutes, hours, months, etc.  The end result is as follows:

Datediff

 

 

Feature Spotlights
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Inside MC: Meet the MC Team – Calvin

July 17, 2009 by Brian Kincaid 1 Comment

Have you contacted the Maintenance Connection support team within the past three years?  If you have done so more than once, it is likely you have met Mr. Easy, better known as Calvin.  I describe him as Mr. Easy because it describes so many aspects of his personality:  easy to get along with, solving problems is easy for him, and he always shows customers how easy the software can be to use.

Outside of his dedicated work at Maintenance Connection, Calvin keeps himself busy with several hobbies including cars, music, computer games, and disc golf.  Of course this all falls second to his new bride Sarah whom he married just recently on May 30.  If you were wondering why you couldn’t reach Calvin the first week of June, he was honeymooning in the Virgin Islands – St. Thomas to be exact.   They have since returned to their real lives and home in Burlington, NC which is about an hour from where Calvin grew up in Winston-Salem (no – he doesn’t smoke) , and about 30 minutes from Greensboro where he went to college at University North Carolina, Greensboro. 

 linvillefalls

As a child, Calvin would frequently take his toys apart and put them back together and admits he “like[s] to see how things work”.  Over the past few years, he has worked on his 1992 Acura Vigor and has replaced practically every part including the engine, custom welded seats, and converting from an automatic to manual transmission.  His passion for music resulted in him adding a custom stereo system on which he will play anything that sounds good with his 12″ subwoofers except “country and world music”. 

See images below:  1) Calvin’s project car … paint will be the finishing touch.  2) The new engine he replaced personally 3) The custom car stereo

When he isn’t listening to music in the car, you may find Calvin playing music on one of his 3 guitars (2 electric, 1 acoustic shown below), trying out a new work out or supplement at the gym, or playing a round of disc golf at a local course (that’s throwing frisbees in metal nets).  That finally explains why Calvin almost wins at our company events that include this unique sport. 

 

IMG_0091

As you can see, Calvin’s curiosity and dedication to excellence extends well beyond his ability to troubleshoot and develop software, however, he still makes it look easy.   So the next time you call in for a support incident, see if you can get him to play “Free Bird” before you go.

Inside MC

Work Order Tips: Week 3 of 3

May 21, 2009 by Brian Kincaid 1 Comment

Work Order Icons / Key Fields

Last week, we covered the most efficient way to close a work order and this week we will be defining the explorer icons and most commonly used fields.   The most important aspect of a work order management system is that it is easy to use and provides valuable reports to help your company save money.  Two simple ways to accomplish these goals are a) to clearly understand the system icons and b) streamline the work order process by focusing on key fields during creation/closure.

Work Order Icons

There are several standard icons within the explorer that help users identify the status of work orders and which ones require immediate action.  The below screenshot includes the most common icons used in our application in addition to icon definitions.

Icons

First Column

1) Orange Clipboard = Preventive Maintenance Work Order (based upon a PM Schedule previously configured)

2) White Clipboard = Unscheduled Work Order / Service Request / Corrective Maintenance

3) Brown Hammer = Issued status

4) White Clock = On-hold status

5) Yellow Telephone / Bold Text = Requested status

5th Column

1) White Clipboard with Heads = Assigned

By glancing at the above screenshot, a user can identify quickly that two work orders need to be assigned based on them not showing the white clipboard with heads and that one work order has not been reviewed at all because it is still bold with the telephone icon.  They can also decipher that two of the orange clipboard work orders are PMs and are targeted out beyond the rest for completion … meaning they can focus on the unscheduled work orders first. 

For additional information regarding the WO icons, please refer to the following section of our User Guide :  http://www.edemo.us/icons.pdf.   The full User Guide is available as searchable HTML or a PDF document within the Maintenance Connection application.

Work Order Key Fields

Our application was designed flexible to accommodate for variety in customer’s business process.   It is important to define which fields users will be encouraged and required to populate while hiding others that provide less value to the long term reporting.  The most common work order fields that customers populate and report against are as follows:

1) Request InfoFields-1

2) Problem

3) Asset

4) Type

5) PriorityFields-2

In order to help customers streamline their work flow, our system includes an administrative feature called the Forms Manager that is located under the Tools menu.  This Tool allows a user to define which fields should be hidden, required, or renamed.  See below for a screenshot example:

Forms-1

Feature Spotlights
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