OT: Maintenance software

I have been tasked with selecting a Maintenance software package for our plant. This will include scheduling and tracking preventitive maintenance and tracking reactive maintenance. We are a contract machine shop, 50,000 sq. ft, with production machinery consisting of rotary transfer machines, screw machines, CNC lathes and mills, centerless grinders, and automated inspection and sorting machines.
Any suggestions about what works and what does not will be appreciated. I have no previous experience with these types of systems. Thank you.

Maintenance Software

I did my Senior Business Project for my B.S. in Business Administration on Maintenance Management Software in 1989, and sold the results to Weyerhauser. I think I reviewed 93 packages, and made a huge spreadsheet comparing different features, and did a cost per feature analysis.

Almost all vendors will supply you a Demo - just ask.
Search CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Managment Software)
Since then, I kind have NOT kept up on it.

But I know you will want these features:
Email integration.
PM Task Integration
Failure Codes for Pareto Analysis
Report Generation

Here are some links where you can find lots of different packages:
Plant Engineering and Maintenance Magazine
http://www.pem-mag.com/

Plant Engineering:
http://www.manufacturing.net/ple/

Anyway, tear into your Due Diligence, and research away. There is way too much to cover here.

Make sure you twist the sales guy arm for two upgrades in your P.O.

Articles:
It's about uptime - Use CMMS systems to improve maintenance programs
http://www.industrialsourcebook.com/cgi-bin/archivef.pl?id=703

Maintenance Software - Use your CMMS to create a competitive edge :
http://www.industrialsourcebook.com/cgi-bin/archivef.pl?id=707

I created my own in Access. Believe it or not we have no problems at all with our Parts Inventory, PM or Downtime Databases (and it's not hard to learn Access). Plus I can configure them the way I want to. Some might say that it takes too long to write your own, but the price is good and Hester's updates are relatively free.

CMMS is useless unless....

The first thing that had better come out of the Boss' mouth in the morning is this question:
"Did all the PM's get done?"
If this is not the plant mentality, then ****-can the assignment into your bottom drawer - your just spinning your wheels.

PM's are the water of life. A good PM program will keep you in a job, cause orders to go out on time, and keep production off your back. If your not getting 90% uptime, your not doing maintenance right. Argue if you want, but it is the truth.

I forgot to mention, what I think IS *THE* MOST important CMMS tool - Equipment Historicals. The problem is people don't like to write - or can't. So make it real simple for yourself. If a person doesn't write up what they did on a piece of equipment, write them a disciplinary warning...