Pirana CMMS

Pirana CMMS

The next generation of CMMS has arrived!

Pirana is the revolutionary browser-based system for the integrated management of maintenance, materials, services and more. Streets ahead of the rest, Pirana sets new benchmark standards for CMMS simplicity, usability and affordability. Whatever the size of your organisation - micro-small to mega-multinational - Pirana can fit your needs like a glove. Internet, intranet and mobile phone deployment means you can access your system from anywhere.

Pirana is the engineering and service manager’s essential tool for getting the job done. It provides the framework to transform operational and business performance. You can increase efficiency, regulatory compliance and safety, product and service quality, customer satisfaction and crew morale – and, accordingly, business profitability and your own personal success.

Read the Story of Pirana.

The information drill-down and performance reporting capability of Pirana is astonishing. Pirana can process and display information, not just as printed reports, but vivid on-screen displays. Pirana provides information at a glance - and a picture is worth a thousand words.

Pirana allows an unlimited number of users to track endless quantities of happenings and transactions - effectively, efficiently and effortlessly. The system's ability to gobble up, search and report task information is astounding. Most tasks will generally concern PM routines, running repairs and Health & Safety compliance; however, others may well originate from arising events and your To-Do list - everything you have to get done to ensure things run smoothly, happen on time and make someone happy. Pirana can add structure to activities that have traditionally been chaotic and outside the scope of conventional maintenance systems.

With Pirana's performance planning, monitoring and control capabilities, you can streamline your maintenance and materials management processes, cutting cycle times, reducing costs and enhancing the quality of operational outcomes. Groundbreaking Pirana can manage maintenance, assets, facilities and more; Pirana CMMS will certainly make any engineering or service manager's life a whole lot easier.

Pirana is not like the other computerised maintenance management systems around. Groundbreaking Pirana delivers awesome technology with exquisite usability. Shire's Centre of Excellence proficiency in CMMS development, unparalleled understanding of user needs and cutting edge technical know-how has resulted in a user-focused maintenance management system that is totally unique.

The best way to learn about Pirana - or just computerised maintenance management systems in general - is to come along to one of our free Roadshows.

Key featuresIf it were a car, it would handle like this; nimble, fast, powerful and unbeatably affordable.

Benefits

Tracking jobs is easy…

Use Out of the Box

Switch on and get going! The system works straightaway. As with a new car, you could jump in and drive off without studying the manual - finding your way around as you go and leaving the adjustment of mirrors, seats and other stuff until later. You could and you can, but it’s much better to invest a little time familiarising yourself with the controls and tweaking the adjustments – then you can really get your foot down and go!

The easiest user-interface bar none

Navigation is easy

User-friendly Pirana promises instant attraction for individuals new to CMMS. Equally, the fresh look and feel of Pirana’s lightweight, information-at-a-glance interface makes CMMS old-hands drool. Packed with appeal, Pirana’s tree views, quick links and graphical presentation of data guarantee user delight. The easy-to-pick-up system combines ultimate simplicity with amazing flexibility. You can customise Pirana to suit your own needs, renaming and creating new data fields - and even changing the preferred language. CMMS life just doesn’t get easier than this. You can’t get a more simple to use CMMS than Pirana!

User-centred, goal-oriented

A frequent complaint about computerised maintenance systems is that they force you to work in a way you don’t want. Not Pirana! It’s totally user and goal-oriented. Pirana won’t put you in a straightjacket; it works the way you want it to work, facilitating what you want to achieve. For example, besides managing ‘assets’, you can also choose to drive your system using ‘contacts’ – persons or organisations requesting or carrying out planned and ad hoc tasks. Now, how different is that?

The basic system does just what the vast majority of CMMS users want it to do - and no more. Pirana’s ultimate simplicity means there’s no unwanted complications to baffle you or get in the way. When your needs are more demanding, however, you can add more functionality with Pirana’s simple, power-packed, plug-and-play add-ons.

Build the system to fit your own needs – it’s a joy

Pirana is designed with simple components you can individually select and click together – just like the ubiquitous toy bricks from that well-known Danish company.

You can build your CMMS the way you want - make it as big or as small as you want, the shape you want and you can embellish it to suit yourself. Like those bricks, Pirana is intuitive and rewarding for everyone, no matter what their CMMS proficiency. You can pick it up and use it with a smile – Pirana does what you expect, it’s forgiving and it’s fun to use. Pirana CMMS is child’s play.

Everyone’s a fan of those bricks – do you know anybody who’s handled them that doesn’t think they’re delightful? It’s like that with Pirana!

Access from anywhere - browser-based

Access Pirana instantly from your network, or anywhere in the World, using the web browser of your choice. Pirana’s small footprint and one click installation belie the system’s astonishing ability for global reach. From one to one thousand users, and from New York to New Delhi, working with Pirana is quick and effortless for everyone logging in. Smaller organisations can opt for a stand-alone PC or a small office Workgroup, with or without web or network access.

Working from home is easy!

Deployable to the Internet, intranets and mobile phones, Pirana gives true access from anywhere. Whether on-site, on the move or on the sofa at home! No matter where you happen to be at the time and wherever your workplaces and assets are located, you and other authorised individuals can access the system to add or extract information: raise a Work Request; check on what’s happening; download a report; whatever. It’s a small world with Pirana. Have your finger always on the pulse; do your planning in the comfort of your own home; even take your work on holiday!

Manage PM, corrective and other work all in one place – Work Scheduler

Pirana’s powerful Work Scheduler graphically displays tasks of all origins in one place. Planned maintenance, corrective and other tasks are all visible from the Work Scheduler – and you can project the timeline indefinitely into the future or past. Work Scheduler’s interface resembles Microsoft’s hugely popular Outlook calendar – yet gives you the ability to do a whole lot more. The Work Scheduler aids fast response to rapidly changing circumstances, supporting you in making the best-informed decisions on human resourcing and work prioritisation. Success is in the bag.

Scheduling is easy

Blockbuster performance - Microsoft .NET and SQL Server technology

Pirana is a dynamic, web application founded on Microsoft .NET architecture. This jaw-dropping technology allows Pirana to communicate seamlessly across different platforms and operating systems. Furthermore, Pirana utilises the latest SQL database – the promise of ultra-powerful searches, blisteringly fast data processing and sublimely informative reports.

* Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition is included free of charge. If required, Pirana can make use of an existing SQL Server 2005 database. See Shire’s recommended hardware specification for further details.

New, pristine and no legacy code

Pirana is totally brand new and state-of-the-art.

Some other CMMS providers have taken a short-cut to Internet-deployable systems by adding ‘wrapper’ code to old, so-called ‘legacy’ code hacked from an out-dated system. This can make for a clunky feel, operational inefficiencies and poor security. Silk purse and sow’s ear don’t nearly convey the quality of the outcome of this Heath Robinson mishmash. “You can put lipstick on a pig, but it’s still a pig” - Senator Barack Obama’s quipped during the run up to his election as President; that remark is very fitting here. You’re the buyer, so do beware!

Pirana has no second-hand donor parts duck-taped in; none of Pirana’s bits have been salvaged from systems better off on the scrapheap. And ‘new’ doesn’t mean unproven reliability. Pirana has Brawn Formula One reliability thanks to its intensive test bed and track testing – and of course its pedigree.

Get the right information when you need it…

The sure road to success – measure to improve

Target setting and performance monitoring are the prerequisites of effective control. With Pirana, you can enter across-the-board performance targets for all maintenance activities and the system will then automatically measure and report current achievement against them. By taking definitive action in the light of adverse or positive trends, you can gain better control and drive continuous improvement. Pirana makes this otherwise complicated process as straightforward as can be.

Using Pirana’s vivid, interactive Dashboard and Scoreboard displays, you can view all your selected performance indicators - and any other information you want to see - at a glance. Mix and match performance indicators as you like and configure the visual display to suit yourself. It’s easy.

To achieve business objectives - and your own personal goals – you have to plan, monitor and control maintenance activities. To facilitate these crucial tasks, a performance management framework is a necessity – Pirana delivers this requirement in spades.

Pirana’s Dashboard and Scoreboard is right in keeping with the visual management principles of Lean and TPM, perfectly complementing the signs, charts and andons of the visual workplace.

Most of the basic data for monitoring performance will already exist in a well organised maintenance management system. It’s collected and logged in the normal course of work initiation, planning and execution. However, to enable the proper, in-depth analysis, you need to ensure that you have well thought out categories of work types, events, actions, etc – it’s a labelling issue.

Performance indicators - also known as measures or metrics - promote visibility, alertness and agility. They foster organisation-wide common purpose - they’re the essential means of ensuring that everyone in the organisation sings from the same hymn sheet.

There are two categories of performance indicators - lagging and leading. Understanding the nature and use of these two types of indicators is critical to your success as an engineering or services manager. If you’d like to know more, read our guidance: Key Performance Indicators: what you need to know (210KB)

Assess current performance at a touch of a button using the Dashboard

With Pirana’s Dashboard view, it’s easy to track current performance quickly and accurately; you know in an instant where you’re at. A summary display of key maintenance information enables you to grasp the overall situation at a glance: Overdue Work, Today’s Work, Critical Parts to Re-order and so on.

Moving around is easy

And, with a simple click, you can drill down to see the underlying trends. Each user can choose the precise information they have to monitor on-screen to pursue and attain personal targets and organisational objectives. The Dashboard is easily configurable and can be filtered by Client, Department, Engineer, Asset and Location.

The Dashboard is all about today’s work, arising events and actions – your To-Do list. It’s your main workspace because every new action, achievement and increment of progress happens in the here and now; on the day, by the hour, exploiting the moment.

Customising your own visual dashboard display of performance indicators, you can set a RAG traffic light system of red, amber, green – and even make provision for rewarding exceptional achievement with a ‘gold’. The display provides instant clarity about current equipment and work performance compared with both personal and company targets. The Dashboard enables the strategic goals of the business to be straightforwardly deployed for fast action on the ground. Perfect!

With a simple point and click on your dashboard, you can drill down to view the full details of any parameter, including its underlying historical trend – you can choose the reporting periods to suit your own planning and control needs. A wide range of performance indicators and KPIs commonly used in industry are available, including indictors from the world-leading British Standard BSI 15341:2007 ‘Maintenance. Maintenance Key Performance Indicators’. BSI metrics are, of course, also available in Pirana’s comprehensive reports and on Pirana’s Scoreboard.

Are you winning? Check the Scoreboard

Pirana’s Scoreboard compliments the Dashboard. You can use the Scoreboard to display and track the more strategic indicators you’d prefer to keep off your real-time Dashboard. These are likely to be the headline indicators you have to periodically report on to management - and so have to keep an eye. That said, how you actually configure the two displays to work best for you is your choice.

Performance management is easy

It’s straightforward to enter your agreed targets and monitor current achievement against them. The system automatically updates the display from job data entered. Vivid, crystal clear information on performance attainment is available with just a single click. Like the Dashboard, you can drill down to see the trend of how you’re doing on each target – whether you’re getting better, worse or holding your own.

Strategic measures are the long term corporate and campaign objectives you’re working towards, month by month, year on year. The Scoreboard display will typically include current MTBF and MTTR against target for the facility, particular systems and items of critical equipment – because these factors are the prime drivers of Uptime, Availability and OEE.

Powerful Reporting Suite

Complementing the Dashboard and the Scoreboard, Pirana provides comprehensive activity and KPI reports including, Work Statistics, Response Time, Time to Repair, MTBF and a host of others, enabling you to track and analyse performance effortlessly. It’s the prerequisite information you need to jack up equipment availability, ensure regulatory compliance and prove due diligence. Securing the results expected of you becomes as straightforward as it gets.

Reporting is easy

Automatic Despatches, Alerts and Reminders

You can configure Pirana to despatch jobs and updates to technicians via email, as well as automatically alerting you and others to important events, like when critical maintenance activities become due, or a situation you wish to monitor has changed. When you’re hard-pressed (and that tends to be always) it’s a big bonus to be able to use the facility for general reminders and alerts - part of your own automated time management system

Attach, control and automatically print documents

Thanks to Pirana’s centralised and secure Document Manager, you can integrate an unlimited number of documents and files, including, permits, photographs, drawings, instructions, specifications, data sheets, certificates – even thermographs, vibration signatures and video clips - with any entity: Clients, Locations, Assets, Tasks, Contacts and Personnel. Just click on an entity to retrieve all its attached information. And, you can configure Pirana to automatically include associated documents when printing out a Work Order, such as, manufacturer’s drawings, Health & Safety instructions and visual standards. When you know there are no holes in the job information delivered into the hands of workers, that’s very reassuring indeed.

Be quicker. Work smarter. Cut downtime. Ensure compliance…

Anywhere on-line Work Requester

It’s never been easier for personnel, clients and contacts to raise Work Requests. Pirana removes admin obstacles in the way of accurate and timely defect and damage reporting. Cutting out the avoidable delays enables speedier remedial action. It minimises frustration, reduces costs and avoids collateral damage - even personal injury. In addition, your crew’s true backlog of work is always evident to them and anyone else that needs to know. Requesters get automatic updates on the progress of their requests and just love the better communication. Pirana’s secure Work Requester can be accessed from any PC with a web browser; no additional software or particular skill is required. Work Requester is simplicity itself.

Improve service levels and plant uptime

By assigning pre-determined time bands to pre-defined work priorities, Pirana can automatically set the required service response date and time on prioritised Work Orders. In each case, the system will automatically calculate the ‘required-by’ date and time. It’s easy to monitor on-going performance and report actual achievement against target. Better response time = increased uptime. And it’s effortless.

Working with Pirana…

Planned Preventative Maintenance

Pirana’s uncomplicated, yet power-packed, calendar-based PM planner is accessible via the Work Scheduler. From high-frequency, on-the-day inspections to 20 year major refurbishments, you can include tasks of all frequencies. And, Pirana can be configured to release work automatically or manually. Pirana supports virtually any regular pattern of work, including, yearly, monthly and daily. Jobs can be scheduled on a specific day of the week or month - or on multiple days of the week, for example, Monday, Wednesday and Thursday, not Tuesday and Friday. Minor tasks you don’t want to see can be suppressed. Easy drag-and-drop allows individual plans or entire schedules to be shifted to an earlier or later timeslot.

Your non-asset plans can also be added to the Work Scheduler, so any type of task can be tracked against Clients, Locations and Contacts.

Simple yet comprehensive meters and readings

You can set up an unlimited number of meters for the recording of utility consumption and equipment condition monitoring readings. Any meter can be linked to an asset, task, plan or Work Order. After meter readings have been logged by an operative or engineer, they can be fed back into the system to produce trend graphs, reports and statistics. All information is right at your fingertips.

Streamlined Work Control

Work Control is easy with Pirana’s no-nonsense interface. You can manage requests, raise new work, control work-in-progress and sign off completed work. Pirana allows you to configure the work control process, including the ability to raise follow-on jobs, quick sign-off, group sign-off, sign off work as ‘not done’ - as opposed to completed - and clone existing work orders for faster data entry.

Controlling work is easy

Mobile – always in touch when out and about

By enabling the instant entry and direct accessing of data using a standard mobile phone, or other wireless mobile device, Pirana Mobile reduces administration burden while increasing data accuracy and security. Unnecessary data handling, wasteful travelling to and from the jobsite and other work delays are eliminated. You can monitor job progress in real time – from anywhere – and, more importantly, empower mobile workers on-the-spot with up-to-the-minute work instructions and detailed job and asset-related information. Remoteness is no longer a barrier to the ready availability and sharing of information. Everyone’s free to roam – out on site, but not out of sight.

Using paper forms is inefficient and frustrating for all concerned - from the field worker trying to figure things out, wishing he had more information to go on, to the manager at his desk, anxious to monitor events in real time and with a pressing need for accurate, up-to-the-minute information to make a crucial decision or compile a performance report for the powers that be. Because maintenance is a real-time, fast-moving activity, system information should remain synchronised with maintenance-related events as they happen; this can’t be done using paper. It can with Pirana Mobile!

Pirana Mobile helps you drive the all-round quality of decision-making and job outcomes onto a higher plain. Productivity, first-fix rates and customer satisfaction will be raised automatically. And Pirana Mobile is easy to use – it’s just like another intuitive app on your mobile phone. As the TV ad goes: Yes, there’s an app for that!

What about the Users?...

Simple and Versatile Navigation – Tree View

The system can present a so-called ‘tree view’ of the Assets Register. The hierarchy of Client, Location, Assets and Parts, etc is presented on screen, enabling you to view all the interrelationships and navigate your way around your enterprise’s entire asset population. The tree view is the most convenient and intuitive way in which to explore and scrutinise the enterprise’s asset population, as well as its organisational structure.

And it’s interactive. You also have quick access to the compendium of information held for each location, system and equipment item. You can drill-down to find the information you need; click on any item to view its full details. For example, you can view the asset list at each location, a single asset’s assembly hierarchy down to part level, find out where any particular part is used, who supplies it, the technical specification, see a picture of it - and study any other information filed against it.

You can expand or collapse branches to drill down to your level of interest. Finding those haystack needles is easy peasy with Pirana.

Read More

Exploring your asset base is easy

The ‘Assets Tree’ is in essence a 2D model of the physical structure of your enterprise. It’s a hierarchical, branching representation of the inventory of physical assets present within the enterprise’s geographical locations and organisational units. A picture is worth a thousand words so, like the map of the London Underground, tree view is a boon to navigating your way around the system. You’re able to see at a glance where everything is located and the maintainable parts for each asset or sub-assembly.

A comprehensive assets register, with its tree view, should include all items of maintenance significance, that is, those items critical to the enterprise’s operations which require maintenance attention – the list will obviously include: estates, buildings, plant, machinery and equipment.

The pictorial model depicts the ‘where’ and the ‘what’ in relation to the enterprise’s assets. Moving down the tree, the hierarchy changes from being location-centred to item-centred. Prime locations, a Site for example, may have a multiplicity of sub-locations, each with many asset systems. Each prime asset system, for instance, a production line or manufacturing cell, will have a multiplicity of equipment assemblies and sub-assemblies, further decomposable into their discrete, maintenance-demanding parts. Pirana can provide all this information at a glance.

With Pirana, it’s easy to set up, track and control as many geographical and assembly levels - so-called asset indenture levels - as you want. You can add as many branches or levels in the structure as you like. However, as always, you should strive to keep everything as simple as possible. The most appropriate number of indenture levels for your particular circumstances will depend on the size of your organisation, its industrial sector, your own maintenance management strategy and, of course, where you are on the journey to best practice. You should only increase the number of levels when it’s really necessary for effective and efficient maintenance planning and control. Most organisations will gradually build their enterprise asset model over time – according to the flow of events and the Engineering Manager’s own needs. A few may well wish to build a comprehensive physical model of their asset-intensive enterprise from day one. It’s your choice.

Tree view saves you loads of precious time; everything’s so much clearer and moving around the system is simplicity itself. It’s a real boon when you’re facing the complexity of multiple locations, each one with a myriad of equipment items.

Context Sensitive Help

Pirana has context sensitive help to guide a user through that part of the system in current use. No need to trawl through the help file – just flip straight to the guidance needed. With this learn-as-you-go support, new users can quickly gain confidence and proficiency, enabling them to master the software in the shortest possible time. If a user needs further help, it’s immediately available via a direct link to Shire’s on-line Webex Support Centre.

Safe, secure data with no peeking!

System data is securely protected against unauthorised viewing and editing. You can configure and assign system access rights in accordance with your own management policies and procedures. System users can be allocated to User Groups with pre-determined, standard access rights – for example, Client, Supervisor, Contractor, Work Controller or Work Requester.

Data security and information confidentiality are always top priority. However, when you’re eager to reap the gains in operational effectiveness and efficiency from deploying a single CMMS across multiple localities, you can face a predicament: How to protect sensitive local information from unauthorised prying eyes and the possibility of tampering? With the configurable Location Level Security feature of Pirana CMMS, this dilemma is avoidable. And there’s no need to compromise - you can have your cake and eat it. Company, customer, suppliers and employees data can be held locally secure while still providing the privileged few with total overview.

You can set Pirana up to allow end-users to see only information pertinent to one or more pre-designated locations or, alternatively, deny an end-user access to locations. This means that asset, Work Order, job scheduling, materials and contacts information can be reserved to only those who need to know – about its detail, or even of its very existence.

Empty pockets and no IT skills? No problem…

If you think professional level CMMS is beyond your reach, think again! Lack of funds and IT resource needn’t bar anyone from enjoying the benefits of computerised maintenance management. Sign up to Pirana On-Tap™ and you can be up and running in a flash. It’s easy CMMS on easy terms.


Pirana On-Tap™ is SaaS (Software-as-a-Service)

Pirana On-Tap™ demolishes the traditional cost and technical barriers to CMMS acquisition and use. For a small monthly fee, Shire will host Pirana for you in a secure data centre, managing the whole service, not least data preservation and disaster avoidance. To get going at your end, you only need an Internet-connectable computer with a web browser.

In contrast to a CMMS deployed on your own premises, you don’t need any up-front capital, IT skills, new servers or other extra kit. Plus, you don’t have to worry about system back-ups, crashes and unpleasant stuff like that. Shire also automatically upgrades the system-in-use and even monitors its correct usage.

So, on top of Pirana’s already extraordinary benefits - including access-from-anywhere, real-time operation and operating system flexibility - you get these further advantages:  

• No big up-front spend. The low kick-off price tag means you don't have to jump through CAPEX hoops.
• Lowest total lifetime cost of 'ownership'
• No IT skills necessary. Forget about system installation, up-grades, back-ups, crashes, attacks, etc
• No implementation delay. Super-fast deployment across multiple sites
• Simple, expandable, reconfigurable and future-proof. Sign up for what you need now – you can add to or change your system-in-use at any time. Just ask!
• Automatic updates. Only one version of Pirana CMMS is ever in use - the latest and best
• Bullet-proof security. Data is access-protected, fire-walled and backed up for your total peace of mind. Top flight system availability is assured by redundant hardware and power supplies at the hosting centre. It’s better than with an on-premises system!
• All-inclusive monthly fee with minimum fuss. You can even roll-in those essential, but often difficult to get approval for, training courses into your drip-feed payments

Pirana On-Tap™ is the ultimately affordable, zero-hassle solution to your computerised maintenance management needs. CMMS life can’t get easier than this!

It’s like another utility

You can think of Pirana On-Tap™ as another utility. CMMS functionality is right there for you to turn on and use ‘on demand’, just like you do for power, water and telecoms. It really is ‘IT on tap’. With any utility you’re really only after its functional effects. The complexities of providing the facility up to your front door generally don’t concern you - beyond satisfying yourself that service-level expectations for the quality, availability and reliability of supply are met. Shire delivers on all counts. The superlative levels of information confidentiality and security, for example, would make the most surreptitious Swiss banker turn green.

Pirana On-Tap™ is ideal for both small and large organisations. Those with a mobile workforce will find the advantages are simply huge. The accessibility and economics of the solution will obviously have particular appeal for small to medium-sized organisations.

Stick to your knitting

Engineering and service managers are there to lead, innovate and keep the wheels turning. Whilst CMMS is their essential enabling tool, with on-premises CMMS, it’s all too easy for precious time and attention to be diverted onto CMMS system admin, house-keeping and resolving those panic-inducing IT issues. Even when you do have IT resource on site, it’s a scarce resource and the core business always has first call. CMMS upkeep is a non-core activity for everyone in your organisation. It can easily be avoided with ultimately affordable and headache-free Pirana On-Tap™. Think lean!

Pirana On-Tap™ magics away all the bothers of traditional system ownership. You side-step customary implementation delays and can be up and running straight away. You’ll also never have to face those time-consuming and scary IT issues that are often the blight of less resilient on-premises systems. And there’s more wow. Besides avoiding the worries and distractions of IT system provision, technicalities and vulnerabilities, Shire’s economy of scale means the overall cost to your organisation is less than if you had followed the DIY approach.

Beware of SaaS fly-by-nights

Cost-shrivelling, hassle-exterminating, success-escalating Pirana On-Tap™ is like a dream come true.

Other CMMS suppliers may offer a ‘similar’ SaaS solution, but be wary! Caveat emptor is arguably of greater importance with SaaS than with an on-premises system. A SaaS system provider must have a rock-solid reputation and, with CMMS, also be a maintenance specialist. Fly-by-nights may offer an apparently compelling CMMS solution but, buyer beware, that appearance could be less of a reality and more of a well-contrived illusion.


 

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