The number of different certificates and standards, as well as the scope of their respective auditing process, has steadily increased over recent years. In many companies, these audits have a significant effect on the maintenance department. Since 2018, stricter requirements have been imposed on automotive suppliers in particular.
The background to this is the introduction of the IATF 16949 quality standard for automotive suppliers. This standard describes the requirements on quality management systems for serial and spare parts production in the automotive industry with the aim “… of developing the Quality Management System (QM system), which provides for continuous improvement, emphasizing error prevention and reducing dispersion and waste in the supply chain”.
In addition to normative principles for organizational management and the discussion of various quality-relevant topics, the standard also contains explicit requirements regarding maintenance. It specifies that the organization shall develop, introduce and maintain a documented TPM system (Total Productive Maintenance System, Chapter 8.5.1.5) and describes the functions that are to be covered by the system. To meet the objective of continuous improvement, it also specifies maintenance-relevant key performance indicators (KPIs) that must be calculated by this system. Examples include OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness), MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure), MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) and other parameters for preventive maintenance.
In order to meet these, and future requirements set by auditors, it is important that CMMS Software provides the necessary flexibility and ease of configuration. In this way, it can be used to support the certification processes without using new resources or external service providers.
In some cases, even certification-critical aspects that are only indirectly related to maintenance can be covered. This includes, for example, the provision of technical documentation, organizational knowledge transfer as well as the involvement of external service providers. MaintMaster CMMS, for instance, not only provides the required maintenance KPIs out of the box but can also be configured to cover other certification-critical requirements.
