Dirty Data? Clean it up!

When data is dirty, you’re getting the wrong picture. Incomplete, unorganized data with inconsistencies significantly affects not only your bottom line but also your efficiency. To stay on track, complete work orders, and keep equipment functioning properly, you need clean data. Clean data also allow you to look at your entire business. You’ll understand exactly what is going on with just a glance. Is work getting done? Why or why not? Are you going over or under budget?

How do you get rid of dirty data?

Let’s first discuss what it takes to clean data with MaintiMizer™. Look at your equipment and parts labels. Are there duplicates? Are they consistent? For instance, are your blenders labeled as follows: Blender1 and Blender2 or Blender01 and Blender02? I’ll give you a tip, MaintiMizer lists items in alphanumeric order. When adding equipment or parts with multiples, we suggest using “Blender01” instead of “Blender1.” If you have over 10 pieces of the same equipment and you pull up a report to look at each blender, Blender11 would be behind Blender1.

Next, be sure abbreviations are consistent throughout the system––are you abbreviating your mixers? What about pumps, thermostats, and conveyors? Keep it consistent throughout. Alleviate any guesswork about what a piece of equipment is or how many you have. Doing this helps avoid duplicate PMs and inventory that will skew your assessment of the work to be done, PM completion, and wrench time. It can also ruin the reports you need for that audit that’s coming up.

If you’re looking at your labels and see several mistakes, you’ll likely get a headache. Don’t worry––you don’t have to do this yourself. At Ashcom, we offer Professional Services, including data cleanup. We can help merge your equipment and inventory and do anything else you need to keep your system clean and ready for anything.

Your best bet to clean up your data or keep it clean is to use the barcode system: label your equipment and inventory with individual barcodes. You should also keep your counts accurate, and equipment labeled properly, ensuring you’re performing PMs on the right equipment at the right time.

Before you do any cleaning yourself, be sure not to delete anything. Why? There are many reasons, and we will outline them in our next blog. Stay tuned!

Also, ensure your data is clean when you upgrade to MainiMizer™ 5.0 to start the new upgrade off right. If you don’t know about MaintiMizer™ 5.0, check it out here. You’re not going to want to miss it!