Preventive maintenance that does not depend on anyone remembering

Preventive maintenance is the first thing to slip when the day gets complicated. Here it does not rely on anyone's memory: you define it once and the system creates the work on its own.

What a PM plan is

A job that repeats: "inspect the chiller every month", "grease the compressor every quarter", "annual check of the electrical panel". The plan has a title, a description, a frequency, the assets it covers, the technician who usually does it, an estimated time and, if you want, a checklist template.

Preventive maintenance plans in onCMMS with their frequency and next due date
The PM plans, with their frequency and their next due date.

Frequencies and lead time

  • Weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly or every N days, for whatever does not fit the calendar.
  • Meter-based: "every 250 running hours", read from the hour meter. Each asset triggers when it is its turn, not when the calendar says so. Explained in meter readings.
  • Lead time in days: the work order appears a few days before the due date so there is time to plan.
  • All of it inside your working calendar: nothing is scheduled on days your company does not work.
  • One plan can cover several assets: one work order is generated per asset, each with its own checklist.

Working calendar: no weekends, no holidays

Each company sets the days it does not work: the days of the week it is closed, its public holidays and its shutdown periods. Preventive maintenance stops scheduling work on those days. There is a single rule, and it is written on the screen: if an inspection falls due on a non-working day, the work order is scheduled for the next working day.

  • A daily plan skips the weekend instead of piling up work orders nobody will do.
  • A yearly inspection that lands on a holiday moves to the next working day: postponed, not lost.
  • If you do not want a calendar, leave it off and everything works as if it did not exist.
  • A specific plan can ignore it: the daily round of a walk-in freezer does not care about holidays.
Working calendar settings in onCMMS: days off, holidays and shutdowns
The working calendar: days of the week, public holidays and shutdown periods.

How work orders are generated

Every morning the system checks which plans are due and creates their work orders. The process is idempotent: running it twice on the same day does not duplicate anything, because there is a unique index per plan, asset and target date. It can also be run by hand from the plan with "Generate now", which respects the calendar and never brings forward an inspection that is not due yet.

When work orders are generated, the assigned technician receives an email with the ones for them, and supervisors a summary for the team. Plans past their due date are flagged and counted on the dashboard.

What happens if nobody does a PM work order?

The work order stays open and, as soon as its target date passes, it counts as overdue on the dashboard and in the daily digest supervisors receive. The plan is flagged as overdue too.

Can I pause a plan for a while?

Yes. You deactivate it and it stops generating work orders without losing its history. Reactivate it when you need it again.

Can I change the date of the next inspection?

Yes. When editing the plan you set the next due date, and from then on the frequency counts from that date.

Can I stop it from generating work orders on weekends?

Yes. In Settings → Working calendar you mark the days your company does not work and load your holidays; from then on an inspection due on one of those days is scheduled for the next working day. The calendar only affects automatic PM: work orders you create by hand keep their dates.

Screenshots show the current interface, which is in Spanish. An English interface is on the roadmap; read where it stands.

Keep reading

Meter readings: the forklift's hours, recorded and in plain sight Record hour meter readings, mileage or temperature per asset, see them in a chart, and trigger preventive maintenance by running hours instead of by calendar. Work orders with evidence, not good intentions Create, assign and track work orders with checklists, time tracking, photos and on-screen signatures. Closing one produces a signed PDF report of the work done. What is a CMMS, and when does a small business need one? A CMMS is software that tracks assets, maintenance requests, work orders and preventive maintenance. What it solves, what it does not, and when a small business needs one.

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