AUTOMATING FACILITIES MAINTENANCE WITH SOFTWARE

Automating Facilities Maintenance with Software

Whether you run an apartment building, multiple properties, a school, a hospital, manufacturing facility, or public space, your facilities demand regular maintenance. In addition, you’re likely accountable to senior managers who need to know that your response time is adequate, all contractual obligations are being met, and that disruptions are being kept to a minimum. Other areas of concern include costs associated with facilities maintenance as well as the satisfaction of tenants, employees, and other building occupants.

The more complex the assignment, the more important it becomes to have a system maintenance plan in place. Maintenance software can measure performance and automate common tasks – and much more. Moving from a paper-based system to maintenance software could be advantageous. Not only can a good program provide you with the tools you need to schedule work and forecast repairs, it can also provide you with detailed reports documenting work completed, labor and materials consumed on a month-to-date or year-to-date basis, turnaround times, and other key performance metrics.

While maintenance software comes with a myriad of features, you may find the following features extremely useful in terms of facilities maintenance:

• Service Requests – Service requests come in from the people who use the facilities such as tenants, students, and office workers. Once a service comes in, use your maintenance software to schedule the work, track its status, and more.
• Work Orders – Create work orders based on service requests and provide maintenance workers with a detailed plan describing exactly what must be done. Parts, materials, and labor can be tracked by the maintenance software as well.
• Maintenance Dashboards – Dashboards provide an at-a-glance view of facilities maintenance tasks and metrics, allowing you to measure performance, respond to trends, and view real-time information such as costs or labor hours.

While maintenance software won’t automate the actual work to be performed, it can provide you with the tools needed to respond to service requests, track performance, and improve satisfaction. (Source: eMaint EAM)

The Most Efficient Conveyors for Handling Dry Bulk Solids

Transferring powders, pellets, and granulated solids is a challenge for a wide range of industries. Not surprisingly, a great deal of innovation has gone into solutions for this challenge. There are many ways manufacturers, farmers, miners, and others have found to move their products. Here we'll talk about three of the most versatile.

Cleated belt conveyors - These are a modified version of the simple conveyors you've seen used for many other purposes. But most belt conveyors wouldn't be well suited for handling dry bulk solids. The obvious reason is that narrow, flat, moving surfaces have a hard time keeping powders and granules in place long enough to transfer them any distance -- at least without a few modifications. To meet this challenge, innovators like Cambelt International have added flexible side walls to hold material on the belt. Cleats or nubs on the surface of the belt keep the powders or granules from caking or rolling around on the surface.

These belts can be enclosed to keep from exposure to the environment if needed. Cleated belt conveyors can handle incredibly high volumes of material and are versatile enough to carry a wide variety of particle sizes and levels of moisture. But they may require more space than other options.

Screw conveyors - These machines, also called auger conveyors use a narrow spiral ramp around an extended shaft to push material along a tube or trough. As the shaft spins, material is pushed along the forward curve similar to how a drill forces wood out of a shaft it is creating. These systems are ideal for moving dry powders and granules where space is limited because they are very compact. However, at high inclines volume can be limited because material tends to pack in the tube. This can also happen along horizontal paths where any moisture is introduced. Slightly wet materials can begin to cake along the spiral path.

Pneumatic conveyors - These systems use pressurized air to move powders from one place to another. Airtight tubes are connected to vacuums at the destination end of the system, blowers at the source end, or a combination. The fluidity of pneumatic conveyors allows for multiple starting and ending points using multiple blowers and vacuums respectively. These systems can be contoured to fit into existing infrastructure because the air doesn't need to follow a rigid path. But these machines are only well suited for powders and very light weight granules. Also, any amount of moisture can render the system inoperable.

These three configurations account for nearly all handling of dry bulk solids for energy, food, construction, and manufacturing industries. They each have their strengths and weaknesses, but all are very efficient at what they do.

Article originally posted here.

4 Keys to Improving Employee Performance and Morale

Some managers think they can improve employee performance and morale by buying donuts occasionally or scolding employees like misbehaving teenagers. But these problems are usually much more deeply rooted in company policies, the social structure in the office, a company's system of rewards, etc. This places a great deal of the responsibility for poor morale on management, and no amount of donuts or scolding will fix it. Here are some general keys to begin changing your business from the roots up.

Leading out of the status quo
Talking about change is seldom enough to affect an enduring new direction. And the leaders of your company: owners, managers, and supervisors need to set the pace. Additional training and team building retreats are good ways to pivot to a new way of doing things. But it's up to leaders to maintain momentum after all the excitement for change wears off.

Positive feedback culture
Employees often suffer from poor morale because they don't feel appreciated and don't feel that they deserve appreciation. Simply offering encouraging statements is rarely effective as a motivational tool because people see them as patronizing. White River Academy is a boarding school for troubled teens. They have begun using a new approach to improving teens' self-concept by giving them opportunities to excel at something and then giving them due praise. This same approach works on struggling employees and is more cost effective than firing and retraining new people from scratch. Setting people up for success empowers your work force by giving them personal satisfaction for a job well done.

Setting new rules and expectations
There may be fundamental flaws in procedures or policies that lead to inefficiency. If this is the case then keep an open mind to changing these policies, even if they've been around forever. It may be worth hiring a consultant to identify where problems arise. But keep in mind that changing expectations doesn't necessarily mean rewriting your employee handbook. Often, break downs in the line of command and productivity occur because policies are inconsistently enforced. The statement, "The new plan is the old plan, we're just going to do it this time" is almost always a better solution than scrapping policies that haven't worked because they haven't been followed.

Give praise in their own language
Once people know what is expected of them, they'll do it if they know their employers recognize their hard work and creativity. Each person has his or her own ways they like to be appreciated. Some people relish public recognition; others are moved by a private pat on the back and a "well done". For some, you don't have to say anything; they measure appreciation in the level of trust you place in them. This puts the responsibility on the manager or supervisor to learn how each employee ticks and the best way to motivate them. Of course virtually everyone speaks the language of money. So you'll never go wrong rewarding loyalty and good work with a raise or a bonus.

Article originally posted here.