Does anyone here have any experience with preventive maintenance?

I'm an intern for the summer who has been tasked with the creation of a preventive maintenance program. Our maintenance team (3 guys) is looking for some software to help manage maintenance. We already have instructions on PM's for each machine. Anyone have experience with any particular maintenance software? Is maintenance software a waste of money? All PM's under monthly will be handled by the machine operators. Our maintenance guys could always use outlook, but that has no way to track inventory use, record time spent, or keep records for when someone wants to run a report. Any advice on creating a PM program would be greatly appreciated.

Just do a Excel spreadsheet, that way you can customize the cells, rows, and columns to your liking. The likelihood of a software to fit your exact needs is remote at best.

Like ifixcnc said, an Excel spreadsheet is your best bet. That's what I use.
I log all maintenance on our machines, down to pretty small details like simple limit switch replacements all the way up to ballscrew and linear guide replacements.
With 65 machines to keep track of, I'd be lost without it.
Often times it's a big help in diagnosing problems as well, I can scan through the log to see when the the last time an encoder for example or other parts were replaced.
It helps to take a quick look and say "hey that 'thing' hasn't been replaced in 2 years, I'll check that." Know what I mean?

Our facility (large pharma plant) used to use imaint software. I think it worked well until we were forced to got SAP (which is an acronym for: Sucks All Profit)

Think a crew sheet good for each need that would list the key points and the special needs.. Like lathe #3 needs once a week check of gear box oil.
Excel spreadsheet good because easy to alter and add notes.

with the if the regular guy is off the others may know what is needed.

I use a software package called Fleet Maintenance Pro 14. I've used a couple versions over the last 17 years. I use it to keep track of 78 different pieces of equipment including vehicles, shop equipment, building infrastructure, and anything else I want to throw in.

It's built by a company called Innovative Maintenance Systems:

IMS, fleet maintenance software for vehicles and equipment

It's well worth your time to investigate it. It allows preventive and repair categories, assignment of individuals or vendors to tasks, keeps track of expenses against each machine, allows you to setup advance reminders for upcoming tasks, and has a host of other valuable features.

You can download a trial copy that works for 30 days free. There are both individual and enterprise versions. Being a one man shop I use the individual version. Over the years I've found it to be a valuable tool both for tracking maintenance and expenses.

If there's only three of you doing maintenance all you probably need is a simple spreadsheet or database and some notebooks. With all the modern electronic toys available it's easy to fall into the trap of "over-managing" your processes and spending more time recording things than actually doing them. You only need enough information to make sure nothing important gets overlooked...

The company I work for demands all maintenance be logged on work orders. I take the pertinent data from that and stuff it in an excel sheet. I don't have every little thing, but parts that are commonly replaced in the "everything dies" zone is logged. I got bored one day and figured out how to do formulas for average component life and days since last replacement to sort of help me keep track of whats probably going to die next. Its not real pretty, basically just a simple spreadsheet with the part and a list of replacement dates, but it tells me what I need to know.

We also have check lists for the monthly stuff just as a reminder. Things like inspecting the fire extinguishers and ladders and that sort of crap is on there. Don't make it more complex than it really needs to be, or you'll spend more time doing data entry than doing work.

For what its worth, the maintenance department where I work is just me and my boss. We do a whole lot of things in-house, probably more than we really ought to but it keeps us going and keeps costs reasonable.

I have had to set up PM programs at many companies. Mostly old school with a clip board and some printed forms with the items to do down the left edge and columns for checking when the item was done. These lists usually included several hundred individual items on several dozen items of equipment.

When computers came along, I started making those printed forms on the computer, usually with a spreadsheet program, like Excel. Of course, there is no harm in keeping the record in the computer.

With a three person department, I would think a simple system would be the best. A complicated program would be more of a time waster than it would save.

When you make out the checklists, you will have to make lists of items by the frequency of their scheduling. Hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, etc. You will need to make the daily or weekly list to reflect the items that are due and the ones that are not due should be blacked out or omitted.

A word of caution, I would make it flexible because in almost all of the systems I set up, we later discovered that a lot of the items that the OEM recommended were either not needed or could/should have been done at a different interval than what was recommended in the equipment manual. And you will find others that you will want to add to the program. You don't want to skip any essential items, but if you include too many non-essential ones, people will start skipping them and later they will just skip the whole list because it is not what really needs to be done. In short, keep it real. These lists will dictate the manner in which you make out the daily or weekly lists. In some cases it may be difficult to integrate all the time intervals into one sheet/list and you will need different ones for different time periods.

Another consideration is that people tend to go down a list, from one item to the next. This may not be the most efficient way to accomplish the tasks. You might consider grouping some or all of the items by the manner or in the order in which they will be most easily accomplished. For instance, if an item requires a particular tool, say a grease gun, then you may want to group all the grease fittings into one place on the list. If the machines are widely spread around the area, that single list of grease fittings may need to be split into two or more sub groups. Each situation (company) may be different. Likewise there may be an adjustment that requires particular instruments of special tools to accomplish. These also may be more efficiently performed by grouping them. What I am saying here is to consider the order in which the items appear on the list and tweak it for the best efficiency.

We use Maintenance Connection at our plant. It is a decent enough program but not intuitive for a occasional user. I liked the ability to look at the history of each machine. It has helped with off season maintenance of our detasseling units.
Jerry