What is a CMMS?

What it actually replaces

Before a CMMS, most facilities run on some mix of a whiteboard, a shared spreadsheet, group texts, and whatever's written on the equipment tag itself. That works for one person and a handful of units. It stops working the moment there's more than one tech, more equipment than anyone can remember the full service history of, or a manager who needs to know what's actually been done without walking the building.

What it tracks

Preventive maintenance (PM): scheduled checks on equipment — filter changes, belt inspections, lubrication — before something breaks, not after.

Work orders: something's broken or requested, it gets assigned, worked, and closed out with a record of what was done.

Deficiencies: something's wrong but isn't urgent enough to be a work order yet — logged so it doesn't get forgotten.

Parts & inventory: what's on hand, what's been ordered, what a specific unit actually needs (filter size, belt size) without digging through old paperwork.

CMMS vs. EAM

A CMMS focuses on the maintenance work itself. An EAM (enterprise asset management) system is the broader version — it adds an asset's financial lifecycle (depreciation, capital planning, procurement) on top of maintenance. Most facilities crews only ever need the CMMS half; EAM tools tend to be built for finance and ops teams at a much larger scale.

When a facility actually needs one

Usually the moment it stops being obvious who did what, when — a second tech joins, a manager asks for a maintenance history on a specific unit and nobody has a clean answer, or the same part gets ordered twice because nobody remembers the last one arrived.