Contents

• Introduction
• Adding Critical Parts
• Associating Critical Parts to Equipment
• Filtering Critical Parts
• Entering Critical Part Changes
• Critical Part Changes via Preventative Maintenance Alarm
• Critical Part Changes via Excessive Downtime Report
• Viewing Equipment Maintenance History
• Viewing Critical Part History

Introduction

Critical parts can be associated with preventative maintenance tasks so that it is possible to track which parts are used the most over time. This can help with determining which replacement parts to stock and what quantities are required, as well as whether some parts are being replaced more often than they should be.

Adding Critical Parts

To maintain the list of critical parts for your organization and equipment, you will find a new setup page under the Settings tab on the left menu bar called Critical Parts (link if you are logged in). Here you can create your parts and assign them to an organizational unit, equipment, category, manufacturer, or model.

Clicking on this item will load the Manage Critical Parts page.

There will be no critical parts yet, but there is a button in the upper right corner labeled New critical part. Clicking that button will launch the New critical part dialog, which will allow you to define the part. There are 3 fields in this dialog, which are highlighted below.

1. Critical part – The name or part number of the critical part being added. This can be something like a manufacturer part number or a reference number in an ERP or MRP system.
2. Description – A one sentence description that will help identify the part to someone who needs to work with it during maintenance.
3. URL – A web URL to a description or a vendor’s website for the part. Can also be a link to the part in an ERP or MRP system if a Web interface is provided by the system.

The data for a new critical part can be added to the form, and then the Save part button can be clicked to save the information.

After clicking the Save part button the dialog will close, and the critical part should now be visible in the Manage Critical Parts table. If the part is not visible and there are many parts already in the table, it may be necessary to scroll down to find the part.

Associating Critical Parts to Equipment

Once the critical part has been entered, it should be associated with an organizational unit, a piece of equipment, a category or a manufacturer/model. There are controls to set these associations under the Specific To heading in the Manage Critical Parts table.

1. Category – A high-level type of equipment to associate this critical part with. This is a method to avoid having to associate the critical part with every related piece of equipment in the company tree. A category of Horizontal CNC can be set rather than adding every individual horizontal CNC machine under Org Unit / Equipment. If the part is only for one specific category of equipment, this field can be set and the others left blank.
2. Manufacturer / Model – Allows the critical part to be scoped to a specific equipment manufacturer and model number. If the part is only for one specific model of equipment, this field can be set and the others left blank.
3. Org Unit / Equipment – Associates the critical part with an existing organizational unit or a piece of equipment. These must already exist in the company tree in the left sidebar in order to be used. If the part is only for one specific piece of equipment or organizational unit (i.e. a department), this field can be set and the others left blank.

Any combination of these three fields can be used to properly scope the critical part to organizational units and equipment. However, it is possible to set the scope so specifically that the critical part may not appear in lists when you expect it to. A general rule is that a critical part’s scope should be set as general as possible starting with the Category field and moving right towards the Org Unit / Equipment field.

To add a category, click on the text field labeled Select categories (see Figure 5). A drop down menu will appear with checkboxes which allow selection of categories. More than one category can be selected for a critical part at the same time.

If you do not find a category in this list that fits your situation, please contact Caddis Systems Support to see about adding a category.

Setting the Manufacturer/Model field works the same way as setting a category. Clicking on the text field labeled Select manufacturers / models will show a drop down menu with check boxes for selecting a manufacturer and/or model. The main difference between this drop down and the categories drop down is that models can be nested under manufacturers. It is possible to expand a list of models by clicking on the triangle next to the manufacturer name.

As with categories, more than one manufacturer and model can be selected for a critical part at one time.

Selecting an organizational unit or piece of equipment works in the same way again. Click in the Select org units / equipment field and a drop down menu will be shown with all of the organizational units and equipment that have been added to the company tree. More than one organizational unit and/or piece of equipment can be selected at one time. This is the most specific option and is useful when it is desired to associate a critical part to only one machine or department, or with just a few.

Filtering Critical Parts

Once many critical parts have been added to the table, it can become difficult to find a specific one. The filter fields in Figure 5 can be used to display only the parts that match a specific category, manufacturer, model, organizational unit, or equipment. Clicking on these text fields will present a drop down holding check boxes of the items to filter for. A listing of the text fields and what they are for is given below.

• Filter categories – Displays only the critical parts which match a category, or group of categories that are selected via the check boxes.
• Filter manufacturers / models – Displays only the critical parts which match a manufacturer or model, or a group of those which are selected via the check boxes.
• Filter org unit / equipment – Displays only the critical parts which match the organizational unit and/or equipment, or a group of those which are selected via the check boxes.

Entering Critical Part Changes

There are 2 ways to enter critical part entries for your equipment.

1. In the Preventative Maintenance (PM) system you can assign critical parts to your alarms. The effect this has is that when that PM alarm is acknowledged, the user will be asked to confirm if those critical parts were maintained. This then contributes to the critical part history for that equipment.
2. In the Excessive Downtime Report there is a new column where you can edit a list of maintained critical parts corresponding to that specific excessive downtime record. These then contribute to the critical part history for that equipment.

Each of these places has their own section below.

Critical Part Changes via Preventative Maintenance Alarm

To associate a critical part with a preventative maintenance alarm, first click on the Preventative Maintenance item in the right sidebar of the Caddis web application.

After clicking this, two columns will be displayed in the center of the page. The right hand column shows the history of PM alarms, and the left column shows the current PM alarms with a button to add a new alarm.

Clicking the Add New button that is highlighted in Figure 9 will present the Add alarm dialog. Once the Equipment and Alarm Type drop downs have been set, more options will be presented including an Associated Critical Parts section. There is a button for adding a critical part to the alarm in this section.

Clicking the Add part button will cause the button to change into a drop down menu. Clicking on the menu will provide a list of critical parts that are configured for that machine. If the drop down shows a message similar to No critical parts configured for machine, and you believe at least one part should be populated in the drop down, review the Specific to settings for the critical part in the Associating Critical Parts to Equipment section to make sure they are correct and are not scoped too narrowly. Selecting a critical part from the list will associate it with the alarm and display additional options for that critical part.

The first new control is a drop down menu called Action. This is a pre-configured set of options that specify what to do with the critical part when the maintenance is performed. Examples of a few actions are Replace, Refill, Inspect and Swap. The second control is Qty (quantity). This specifies how many of the critical part are to be worked with during maintenance.

The rest of the alarm dialog can be filled out as normal. When a preventative maintenance (PM) alarm is completed, the critical part information will be carried along with it. When completing a preventative maintenance task, clicking the Complete Maintenance button will display a dialog allowing the critical parts action to be changed along with the number of parts before clicking the Complete button.

Critical Part Changes via Excessive Downtime Report

The Excessive Downtime report can be accessed by clicking the Excessive downtimes entry under Insights in the right sidebar of the web application.

This will open the report in the center section of the page, and a critical part can be set for any excessive downtime entries in the table. Hovering over the “Critical Parts” column of an entry will show a pencil icon, indicating that the field can be edited. Clicking the pencil icon will pop up a box with an Add part button.

Clicking this button shows a drop down like the one in Figure 11, which allows a critical part to be selected and associated with the excessive downtime entry.

Viewing Equipment Maintenance History

The right column in Figure 9 shows the Equipment Maintenance History table. This is accessed by clicking the Preventative Maintenance item in the right sidebar (Figure 8). Every time a user completes a preventative maintenance alarm, that entry will show up in this column. Each entry will show the information highlighted below.

1. Equipment that the preventative maintenance entry is for.
2. The preventative maintenance alarm type (Stopwatch, Cycle Count and Runtime).
3. Description of the maintenance task that needs to be completed.
4. Indicates when the maintenance happened, any comments that were attached (speech bubble icon), and which critical part was dealt with (wrench icon), along with what was done with it (changed, cleaned, swapped, etc).
5. The user who completed the maintenance.
6. Clicking the Export history (csv) button will allow the current information to be exported from the history table so that it can be analyzed in software such as Excel.

Viewing Critical Part History

There is a Critical parts history report under the Insights tab of the right side menu.

This report is accessible from the organizational unit level or the equipment level. The report gives a graphical view of critical part maintenance history combining the critical parts from PM alarms and the excessive downtime report, as well as the possibility for other inputs in the future. A future update will expand on this report providing more in-depth analysis from the gathered data. The report takes the form of a table, where each row is a combination of critical part and equipment information, along with a line chart showing extra information about when critical part maintenance occurred. An annotated screenshot is shown below highlighting each part of the report.

1. Time filter – The time filter controls the time period of the report. In Figure 16 the time period is set to 4w (4 weeks), so the last 4 weeks of critical parts history will be shown.
2. Part # – Column of the report which shows the name/number of the part, and the equipment which had the critical part change.
3. Maintained Count – Column which shows the number of times a critical part was maintained (cleaned, replaced, swapped, etc) in the given time period.
4. Critical part – Name of the critical part for the row of data.
5. Equipment – Piece of equipment that the critical part was maintained on.
6. Count – Numeric value showing the number of times that a critical part was maintained (cleaned, replaced, swapped, etc).
7. Chart – Line chart showing dots for when changes occurred. Hovering the mouse cursor over a dot will display more information about that critical part maintenance.