Tools of the Trade: Using CMMS data to make better decisions

The most frequent question we are asked at Fiix is “How do I analyze my CMMS data so that I can…”

To help answer these questions, we’ve collected best practices on how the Fiix community is using reports, dashboard widgets, and live views to establish benchmarks, track progress and make an impact across their organizations.

Watch the full 30-min webinar on making data-driven decisions with Fiix training and education expert, Joanne Wood, and solutions engineer, Jason Afara.

The wonderful world of widgets

In the Fiix CMMS there are 175+ available widget configurations to help you build custom dashboards for you and your team. Dashboards are great for quickly answering real-time questions and encouraging actions, like ‘how are we performing with our compliance’ or ‘do we have any high priority work orders we need to get to today’? Your dashboard widgets also act as shortcuts to your most frequently accessed views and CMMS tasks.

Pro tip: Some Fiix users copy/paste their dashboard to share weekly or monthly status updates with stakeholders outside their CMMS and use a live dashboard to run team meetings with less prep-work.

According to Fiix training & education expert Joanne Wood, the best dashboards:

1. Measure a goal over time
2. Answer a question using the five-second rule
3. Speak to a specific audience
4. Tell a compelling story
5. Use clear titles and naming conventions

To hear Joanne’s full explanation of how to build dashboards that are easily digestible and super effective, jump ahead to 02:20 in the webinar recording.

Next, we’ll highlight some of the most commonly used widgets by reviewing three custom dashboards created by Fiix solutions engineer Jason Afara. We’ve listed the names of all the widgets he used and included screenshots to enable you to recreate them yourself. To learn how to configure and share dashboards with your team, you can access additional resources in our help center.

1. Work order management dashboard

The most popular work order management widgets are:

Open H&S work orders + Closed H&S work orders

These two widgets work well together to keep track of any key maintenance type. In this example it’s health and safety, but it could be any maintenance type that’s critical to your facility.

Work requests

Think of this widget as your gatekeeper. Fiix users see a dramatic drop in the number of emails, phone calls, and text messages when using the work request portal in conjunction with this widget.

High priority work orders

Use this widget as a launchpad to see what resources are needed for high priority items to be completed. Some users also use this view to assist in prioritizing resources due to COVID-19.

Overdue work orders + Open work orders

These two widgets keep track of current work that needs to be completed and help with further prioritization.

Closed work orders + Maintenance expenses

These benchmarking widgets report on what’s been completed over a certain time period. In our example it’s monthly. Are you completing the expected amount? More or less than? Are you over/under budget?

Work order backlog

This widget is directly impacted by work orders in the system. Keep in mind that some backlog is good. But, are you falling behind? Do you need additional resources? Many Fiix users have relied on this data to adjust staffing levels or organizational structure in the maintenance department.

2. Inventory management dashboard

The most popular inventory management widgets are:

Low stock items

This widget helps you keep track of inventory so you can avoid expensive rush delivery charges.

Purchase orders awaiting approval + Overdue purchase orders

These two widgets allow you to follow-up internally or with vendors to make sure you have the parts on hand to do the work that needs to be done.

Overdue RFQs

Similarly, this widget allows you to follow-up with vendors for quotes. This is often used to ensure larger rebuilds or projects that require a bit more planning are not thrown off schedule.

3. Planning dashboard

The most popular planning widgets are:

Schedule compliance

This widget is great for determining at-a-glance if scheduled maintenance is being completed on time. This information may prompt you to revisit your planning. Are you planning to do too much? Do you have the right resources in place?

PM task completion percentage

This widget tells you if your technicians are following standard procedures and completing all work order tasks or skipping some steps.

Work order on-time completion rate

This widget measures if all work orders are being completed on time. Are you setting realistic timelines? Best practice is to ensure all your work orders have a suggested completion date.

Overdue scheduled maintenance + Work requests + Unscheduled open work orders

Grouping these three widgets together is a great way for facilities that only run production from Monday to Friday to plan for “weekend work”. This combination of widgets can be used to understand what work orders you can tackle during a specific time frame when you have equipment availability or additional resources on hand.

Planned maintenance percentage

The custom dashboard below illustrates how you can use filters and time ranges to set up benchmarking or goal tracking. In this example we are tracking how the planned maintenance percentage is increasing over time. Another common example is benchmarking these metrics across different shifts.

Right-size your reporting

In the Fiix CMMS there are 100+ pre-built reports available for you to generate and schedule. Reports help you make data-driven business decisions by compiling historical or forecasting data.

But, it’s important to determine the business outcome you want to tackle when choosing the best report to run. Reports are best for answering questions like, ‘what have my techs been working on’ and ‘are they doing so efficiently’? They are also powerful for justifying an upgrade or replacement of a machine to your management team.

To hear the full explanation of how to filter reports and star your favorites, jump to 16:50 in the webinar recording above.

According to Fiix users, some of the most frequently generated reports are:

People insights

Detailed employee hours

You can use this report to encourage employee development. For example, illustrating to a technician who is primarily focused on electrical work that you want them to increase their mechanical work. Or, justifying a promotion!

Multisite CMMS utilization + Closed work orders with completion notes

Both of these reports are great for measuring CMMS adoption. The multisite report allows you to benchmark and share best practices across multiple facilities. Whereas the completion notes report is useful for encouraging individual adoption at one facility.

Planning insights

Upcoming scheduled maintenance + Planned maintenance two week lookout

Both of these reports are great for planning upcoming work. The first has a longer time frame and is best for monthly or quarterly planning that may require external resources.

Parts consumed on work orders

This report helps identify outliers. Many Fiix users refer to this report to notice if the same part is being replaced over and over again to troubleshoot issues. This may lead you to do more investigation to determine why, which can lead to operational savings.

Providing justification

Labour Hours by Asset – Top 10 Hitters

This report is also sometimes referred to as the “Bad actors” or “Low hanging fruit” report. Fiix users refer to this report to justify Capex budget when it’s time to replace a piece of equipment because they’re spending too much time and money repairing it.

Maintenance backlog

This report has been used by many Fiix users to justify additional headcount. One Fiix user shared with us how they used this report to hire a millwright to round out their team.

To learn more about reporting in Fiix, register for our complimentary online CMMS training class “Basic Reporting” where we cover running pre-configured business reports, making basic modifications to pre-configured reports, and creating a basic report.

Ways to keep exploring your data

If you have a goal in mind, there is probably a way your CMMS data can help you get there. Many Fiix users also export or use API integrations to share and visualize their data in all sorts of interesting ways – the possibilities are endless!