Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS) and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) software have an equivalent purpose. But are they the same thing?
Both of these solutions have the same goals: preserving, handling and defending facility assets by streamlining maintenance management. Both also move facilities from reactive maintenance to proactive maintenance.
CMMS came first. CMMS was used by large businesses to monitor their assets and maintenance. As the technology got better, there became a need to connect many facilities. EAM then appeared to do just that.
EAM software is effectively a more powerful type of CMMS. In a nutshell, EAM is a long-term, comprehensive system which includes CMMS functions.
The main functions of a CMMS include:
- Automating maintenance
- Managing facility inventory and documents
- Asset tracking
EAM can work with larger sets of users from many different places. EAM can also monitor all parts of maintenance strategy.
EAM can also perform:
- Life-cycle planning and analysis
- Maintenance monitoring
- Workflow analysis
Growth of CMMS
For over a decade, web-based cloud CMMS services have been steadily growing.
CMMS vendors have also devised modules to track data about an asset’s complete lifecycle. This gives facility managers and business owners the new ability to shift into more predictive techniques when making long-term facility management and asset procurement decisions.
To stay competitive in an ever-changing market, facility managers have started to use both types of systems in tandem.
