The Heartbeat of the Maintenance Department?

While attending a handful of educational sessions at NFMT 2009 in Baltimore, one comment stood out above the rest.

For those of you who don't know, NFMT (National Facilities Management & Technology) is a trade show for facility professionals in commercial and institutional buildings. I took in a presentation on computerized maintenance management systems, or CMMS. Many maintenance and engineering managers are familiar with CMMS and have specified the systems for their buildings. Before the presentation, an attendee called CMMS, "The Heartbeat of the Maintenance Department." Being an editor with a magazine that covers the maintenance management industry, I was intrigued by that type of declaration.

Once the session began, the presenter asked the audience to raise their hands if they had a CMMS in their facilities. Surprisingly, only about three hands went into the air. I thought that was interesting, especially because the presenter talked about the low-hanging fruit a CMMS can identify, leading to cost savings. Of course, with the current state of the economy, any monetary savings would be a welcome sight for institutional and commercial buildings. Maybe that's why the session was full of attendees who might not already have a CMMS but want to learn how to purchase and implement one.

The benefits of a CMMS include developing preventive and predictive maintenance schedules and tracking work orders. But I'm guessing the one major take-away for attendees was learning about the savings the system can generate. So, I'm curious: Do you have a CMMS in your organization, and do you consider it to be "The Heartbeat of the Maintenance Department?"