How EAM and FSM reduce your maintenance costs

Unplanned maintenance can be more expensive than planned work because it adds disruption, urgent purchases and lost production. EAM and predictive maintenance can help identify these costs and improve planning. The business case depends on your assets, data and ability to act on the findings.

The price tag of reactive maintenance

You probably know the situation: calls in the middle of the night about machines that have stopped, urgent technician visits and express deliveries for parts. Calculate the cost of downtime from your own lost output, recovery work and delivery obligations.

Start with your maintenance accounts and asset history. Separate planned work, reactive work, parts and production losses. Do not infer a maintenance budget from turnover alone. Reactive work can add costs through:

• Urgent deliveries and expedited freight
• Out-of-hours technician rates
• Production losses and catch-up work at higher costs
• Customer penalties for missed deliveries

Excess stock can tie up working capital while critical parts are unavailable. Measure stock value, shortages and budget variance together to see where planning and inventory decisions need to improve.

Predictive maintenance: from reacting to anticipating

First understand where the pain is, then introduce technology. That’s our approach. We analyse your current maintenance processes and identify where the biggest gains lie. Only then do we implement EAM software with predictive maintenance.

Condition data, such as vibration and temperature readings, can help identify abnormal behaviour before a failure. Detection depends on the asset, sensors and model quality. Maintenance teams validate alerts and decide when to intervene.

Possible improvements to measure include:

• Fewer emergency purchases at premium prices
• Less capital tied up in unnecessary stock
• A higher share of jobs resolved on the first visit
• Replenishment aligned with actual consumption and lead times

Build the business case from your own figures

Establish a baseline before implementation and compare equivalent periods afterwards. Track maintenance cost, unplanned downtime and asset availability alongside the cost of software, implementation and ongoing operation.

Measures to track:

• Total maintenance cost per asset or production unit
• Unplanned downtime hours
• Asset availability and useful life

Calculate the investment and payback for your own scope:

• Annual benefit: avoided costs and released capacity supported by measured evidence
• Investment: software, integration, data preparation, training and change management
• Payback: upfront investment divided by net annual benefit, where that benefit is positive
• Total cost of ownership: implementation plus recurring costs over the chosen evaluation period
• Check reporting requirements separately; software alone does not establish compliance

Review budget variances periodically and trace them to work orders, parts usage and changes in production demand.

Case study: material bookings from monthly to instant

Emergya Wind Technologies (EWT) implemented the Service & Maintenance module in IFS Applications. After the upgrade to version 9, for which Eqeep did the functional verification and testing, EWT’s service engineers book the materials they use on their tablets via the Mobile Work Order app. Each booking reaches IFS instantly; previously, material bookings were done once a month.

Thanks to these direct bookings, vehicles and vans can be refilled more accurately and on time, and EWT has more control over the flow of materials.

Practical first steps

Start with a bounded scope and agree the baseline, owner and evaluation period for each improvement:

1. Centralise planning and measure technician utilisation
2. Digitalise work orders and measure completion-to-invoice time
3. Optimise inventory and measure stock value alongside parts availability

Prioritise assets where failure has a material operational impact. Use maintenance history and condition data to choose a pilot, then compare its results with the baseline before expanding.

Decide on evidence

The return is specific to your operation. Agree which benefits can be measured, include the full implementation and operating costs, and evaluate the outcome before scaling predictive maintenance.

As an implementation partner, Eqeep helps organisations translate EAM and predictive maintenance into lower maintenance costs and higher uptime. We guide you throughout the entire process – from process analysis to implementation and adoption.

Want to know more?

Curious what EAM can mean for your maintenance costs? Schedule an EAM assessment with our experts and discover your savings potential.