CMMS / EAM glossary
Short, concrete definitions of terms from the fields of maintenance, asset management and production.
- CMMS
- A CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) is software for managing maintenance operations: work orders, preventive inspections, the spare parts inventory and repair history. It centralizes data about machines and service work.
- EAM
- EAM (Enterprise Asset Management) is the management of assets across their entire life cycle - from purchase, through operation and maintenance, to disposal. It covers a broader scope than a CMMS: budgets, asset hierarchies, costs and compliance.
- MES
- MES (Manufacturing Execution System) is a system for executing production: it collects data directly from workstations (operator reports, downtime, defects) and accounts for orders and metrics in real time.
- APS
- APS (Advanced Planning and Scheduling) is advanced production scheduling with finite capacity - it plans operations across machines and people, taking into account routings, materials and priorities.
- OEE
- OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) is a measure of overall equipment effectiveness. It is the product of availability, performance and quality, and shows what percentage of a machine's theoretical potential is actually used.
- MTBF
- MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) is the average time between failures - a measure of a machine's reliability. The higher the MTBF, the less often the equipment breaks down.
- MTTR
- MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) is the average repair time - from reporting a failure to restoring functionality. A lower MTTR means a faster response from the maintenance team.
- Preventive maintenance (PM)
- Preventive maintenance is planned inspections and servicing carried out on a schedule (based on time or usage), before a failure occurs.
- Predictive maintenance (PdM)
- Predictive maintenance predicts failures based on sensor data and analytics (including AI/ML), scheduling the repair exactly when it is needed.
- TPM
- TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) is a methodology that involves operators in the daily operation and care of machines in order to maximize their availability and eliminate losses.
- RCM
- RCM (Reliability-Centered Maintenance) is an approach that matches the maintenance strategy to the criticality of an asset and the way in which it may fail.
- Work order
- A work order is the basic document in a CMMS describing a service task: what it concerns, who performs it, what resources and parts are required and what its status is.
- Andon
- Andon is a signaling system on the production floor (light-based or digital) that immediately reports a problem at a workstation and calls the appropriate teams.
- SLA
- An SLA (Service Level Agreement) is an agreement on a guaranteed service level - for example, response and repair times or system availability.
- BOM
- A BOM (Bill of Materials) is a list of the parts and subassemblies needed to manufacture a product or carry out a repair.
- Fixed asset
- A fixed asset is a company asset with a long useful life (a machine, device or vehicle). In the system it has an inventory number, location, value and history.
- Stocktaking
- Stocktaking is a physical count that confirms the actual state of assets and catches discrepancies (shortages, surpluses). In the mobile version it is carried out by scanning QR codes and barcodes.
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