Reliability for every company

During the great ERP boom of the 1980's and 1990's companies have been faced with two choices for their maintenance and reliability software.

1) An SAP style architecture, installed on their own servers and costing several million dollars to implement, or...

2) Some MS Access DB that was generated in house and is not scalable.

Don't misunderstand me, I am very aware of the ties between maintainers and their MS Access databases. In fact it could be said that many of us cut our teeth on MS Access as a way of dealing with recurrent maintenance problems of some sort or other.

But they don't scale too well sadly.

Fortunately there are software systems today that are changing this paradigm. Programs that are as useful, if not more so, than their expensive cousins and available for all of us to use.

1) My favorite online company eMaint. Pioneers in online CMMS, leaders in that field now, and showing the way for software/service providers who will come after them.

The whole idea of SaaS is relatively cheap per user pricing, full web delivered functionality, and data stored on a secure server off premise. (I am sure they can do on premise as well... but I am also sure that the need for that is bound to subside once IT managers get over themselves a little bit)

2) My new favorite Reliability Modeling tool - Raptor!! 

A free version still exists online and I use it a lot these days for modeling and testing thoughts on various issues. For me, this is a must have addition to any maintenance practitioners toolkit.

Especially when you consider that commercial versions of this are available for around $10,000 plus these days.

3) Pump energy optimization tool kit. (PSAT) Another tool that I have used a lot in recent years, although nowhere near as much as I would like to.

This one is also free from the Department of Energy along with a range of other powerful energy management tools.

Have a look around at the internet and technology today. There are two very clear trends that are emerging in business software such as this. 1) Many of them are starting to be delivered online, and 2) They are increasingly cheap if not free.

I am dying for maintenance and reliability software to catch up with these trends. There was a bit of a chance with the free software that was doing the rounds recently, but it seems to have fizzled a bit for now.

Interesting time to be in asset management.

Check out the best roles in the game for maintenance and reliability professionals!