Asset register
Equipment, lines and installations in a hierarchy, each with its record, its location and its full history.
CMMS · Maintenance management
Maintenance stops being a notebook
An asset register with its history, preventive jobs that fire on their own by calendar or running hours, work orders on the technician's phone, and indicators calculated from the real job sheets rather than a month-end estimate.
What it is and what it solves
A CMMS is the system where the asset register, the preventive plan, the work orders and each machine's history live. Its value is not in logging breakdowns but in making the plant's indicators come from real job sheets: without a properly built register and orders that actually get closed, any availability figure is an estimate dressed up as data.
- Reference terminology
- EN 13306:2018 European standard defining maintenance terms, from preventive to corrective
- Indicators
- EN 15341 Maintenance key performance indicators: economic, technical and organisational
- Fit with quality
- ISO 9001:2015, clause 7.1.3 Requires determining, providing and maintaining the infrastructure the process needs
- Measuring equipment
- ISO 9001:2015, clause 7.1.5 Calibration or verification at specified intervals, with the record retained
- Execution
- Orders from the phone, offline too They synchronise once the connection is back
Automatic preventive
Job plans triggered by date, running hours or production counter, without anyone having to remember them.
Work orders
The technician gets the order on their phone, records what they did, attaches photos and closes it at the machine.
MTBF, MTTR and OEE
Indicators come from the job sheets recorded, so they reflect the plant rather than anyone's recollection.
Spares and stores
Spare parts consumption allocated to the order, with minimum stock and a warning before the critical part runs out.
Corrective with root cause
Every breakdown records its cause, its downtime and its cost, which is what lets you decide whether replacing the asset pays.
Calibrated measuring equipment
Calibrations and verifications with their interval watched, linked to the quality system.
Predictive
Vibration, temperature or consumption readings that raise an order before the asset fails.
What it includes
From a message on WhatsApp to a traceable order
- Asset hierarchy: plant, line, equipment and component
- Preventive job plans by calendar, running hours or production
- Work orders with states, owner and actual time spent
- Job sheets from the phone, with photos and signature
- Spare parts consumption allocated to the order and the asset
- Availability, MTBF, MTTR and OEE calculated automatically
- Full history per asset, exportable for an audit
- Calibration of measuring equipment with the interval watched
Real examples
What changes on the shop floor
Food industry · 3 lines
Preventive done when there is a gap
Before The plan lives in a spreadsheet and runs if production allows. Nobody knows how many job plans were skipped last quarter.
After Each plan fires on its own by date or running hours, with its owner and its deadline. The ones postponed are recorded as such, and that is already a different conversation.
Metalworking
Breakdowns nobody quantifies
Before The old press "gives trouble", but there is no number: no downtime, no spares cost, no frequency. Replacing it gets deferred every year.
After Twelve months of job sheets give the accumulated downtime and the real cost. The conversation with the board moves from a hunch to a figure.
Chemicals · audit
Gauges past their date
Before Calibrations are tracked on a separate sheet only Quality looks at. The auditor finds two expired instruments in use.
After Calibration is just another job plan, with its interval watched and its advance warning. An expired instrument stops counting as fit to measure.
Vocabulary
The vocabulary of maintenance
- CMMS
- Computerised Maintenance Management System. It brings together assets, plans, orders and history: what in many plants is still split between a notebook and a spreadsheet.
- Preventive maintenance
- Work scheduled by time or usage to avoid failure, whether or not the asset shows symptoms. Its effectiveness is measured in breakdowns that never happened, which is exactly what is hard to demonstrate without history.
- Predictive maintenance
- Work triggered by a measurement that anticipates failure: vibration, temperature, power draw. Unlike preventive, it avoids replacing parts that still had life in them.
- MTBF
- Mean Time Between Failures. It measures asset reliability: how long it keeps running before breaking.
- MTTR
- Mean Time To Repair. It measures the maintenance team's response, not the asset. A high MTBF with poor MTTR still leaves the plant down.
- OEE
- Overall Equipment Effectiveness: availability times performance times quality. It summarises whether a line performs, provided all three components are measured from real data.
- Job plan
- The list of specific tasks carried out on an asset at each scheduled intervention, with its interval and its expected spares.
- Criticality
- Classification of an asset by what happens if it fails: line stoppage, risk to people, regulatory breach. It decides where preventive effort concentrates, because not everything can get the same attention.
Frequently asked questions
What people ask us before getting started
What exactly is a CMMS?
Computerised Maintenance Management System. It is where the asset register, the preventive plan, the work orders and the intervention history live. Without one, that information sits scattered between a notebook, a spreadsheet and the maintenance manager's head.
Where do you start?
With the asset register. It is the dull part and the one most often postponed, but without a properly built asset hierarchy no indicator means anything, because you cannot tell what it refers to.
What is the difference between preventive and predictive?
Preventive fires on a deadline or a counter: every 500 hours, every six months. Predictive fires on a measurement showing something is starting to fail: vibration, temperature, consumption. The first avoids wear failures; the second, the ones that arrive early.
What are MTBF and MTTR?
MTBF is mean time between failures and measures asset reliability. MTTR is mean time to repair and measures the maintenance team's response. They go together: raising MTBF while MTTR stays high still leaves the plant down too long.
Does the technician need a computer?
No. They receive the order on their phone, do the work, log the time and materials, attach photos and close it at the machine. With no signal it is stored and synchronised on the way out.
Does it cover calibration of measuring equipment?
Yes, and it belongs here. A gauge past its date is a nonconformity under ISO 9001 and IATF 16949, and the mechanism for watching the interval is the same as for a preventive job.
Does it connect to the quality system?
Yes. A breakdown affecting product opens the nonconformity, and a corrective action requiring work on an asset raises the work order. That is the advantage of having it on one platform instead of two tools that do not talk.
And to the ERP?
Spare parts consumption can be deducted from the ERP stores and the intervention cost allocated to its cost centre, through the same route as any other integration: API, intermediate database or file exchange.
How long until it is running?
With the register loaded, a simple preventive plan and orders on the phone, a few weeks. What sets the pace is the quality of the starting asset register, not the tool.
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Sources
Where each figure comes from
References to the official text in force. If a standard is revised, this page is updated and the review date says so.
- EN 13306:2018 — Maintenance. Maintenance terminology CEN · 2018 ed.
- EN 15341 — Maintenance. Maintenance key performance indicators CEN · Current European standard
- ISO 9001:2015, clauses 7.1.3 (infrastructure) and 7.1.5 (monitoring and measuring resources) ISO · 2015 ed.
- ISO 55001:2024 — Asset management. Management systems ISO · 2024 ed.
CMMS software for industrial maintenance management
Kimobox includes CMMS software for managing industrial maintenance: an asset register with a plant, line and equipment hierarchy, preventive plans triggered by calendar or counter, work orders executed from a phone, and spare parts consumption allocated to each intervention.
The maintenance indicators — availability, MTBF, MTTR and OEE — are calculated from the real job sheets recorded by technicians, so the monthly review runs on shop-floor data rather than an estimate reconstructed after the fact.
Living on the same platform as the quality system, a breakdown affecting product opens its nonconformity and a corrective action requiring work on an asset raises the work order, with the traceability ISO 9001 and IATF 16949 ask for and without duplicating records.