The CWMS Jungle Out There

Globalization has been a driving force for companies to manufacture products or provide services more cost effectively in order to compete and survive. As a result, companies have re-engineered themselves making the production department very lean. They have also introduced much more complex and automated equipment whose maintenance requirements were much higher. The maintenance department was generally regarded as a necessary evil and this area was not generally targeted for re-engineering. Today, with the unrelenting pressure from competing industries, companies are slowly realizing that there is a wealth of savings to be made using a successfully implemented CWMS to execute a strategic maintenance management strategy and manage all work in a cost-effective manner. As a result, there has been a boom in the CWMS industry with a number of companies (>250) selling hundreds of CWMS products and related services. This boom is projected to continue well into the twenty-first century. As CWMS software vendors try to get the edge on the competition, some have developed specialized products for certain industries (e.g., electric, mining, fleet), some have targeted small businesses, middle-size businesses and large corporations. Selecting the right vendor and software application for the right business is obviously a daunting task.