SiteIt's 3am and the case erector on line 2 has stopped again. Glue gun fault. The night fitter opens the CMMS on the shop floor tablet to see what was done last time.
The last job on that machine says "fixed". Before that, "reset and ran". Before that, nothing for five weeks, because the day fitter wrote it on a scrap of paper that's now in a bin.
So the night fitter starts from zero. Two hours later they find the same blocked nozzle filter that someone found in September. Nobody wrote it down.
That's the real cost of a CMMS nobody uses. Forget the licence fee. Count every fault your team has to find twice.
Why fitters don't fill it in
Ask your team and you'll hear the same few reasons. It takes too long. The tablet's in the office. There are 40 fields and half don't apply. And the one that hurts: nobody reads it anyway.
They're usually right. Most systems are set up by someone in the office for the office. The fields serve the monthly report. Nothing on the screen helps the person stood at the machine with a meter in their hand.
Engineers will fill in a record when it pays them back. If the history saves them an hour on the next breakdown, they'll write it. If it only feeds a KPI deck they never see, they won't. You can't fix that with a memo.
Make the first record take a minute
Strip the breakdown job down to what the next engineer needs. We'd keep it to these:
- machine and the part of it that failed
- what the fault looked like, and the alarm code if there was one
- what you found, in your own words
- what you did, and any parts used
- is it fixed, patched or waiting on a part
Five boxes. Free text is fine. "Nozzle filter on gun 2 blocked solid, cleaned, needs a spare on the shelf" is worth more than a perfect drop-down that says "Adhesive system: other".
Put the tablet or the phone app where the work is. If the fitter has to walk to the office, the record gets written at the end of the shift from memory, or not at all.
And stop asking for the record before the machine runs. That's backwards at 3am. Get it running, then write it up before the end of the shift. Our piece on writing a fault report an engineer can use goes into what good looks like.
The law asks for less than you think
Under PUWER, where any machinery has a maintenance log, that log must be kept up to date (regulation 5). HSE's code of practice goes on to say there is no requirement to keep a maintenance log at all. It does recommend a record of maintenance for high-risk equipment (L22, paragraph 78).
So the rule is simple. If you've got a log, keep it current. A half-filled CMMS is a log that isn't up to date.
The same paragraph gives the better reason. A detailed log "can provide information for future planning of maintenance activities". It also tells maintenance staff what's been done before. That's the 3am fitter's problem in one line.
Inspections are firmer. Where PUWER needs an inspection, the result has to be recorded and kept until the next one is recorded* (regulation 6). Those records belong in the CMMS too, next to the breakdown history, so one search shows both. If you're not sure what yours should hold, see PUWER inspections: what your records need to show.
Read it back to them
This is the bit most sites skip, and it's the bit that works.
Once a week, at the shift handover or the Monday meeting, put three records on the screen. Pick a good one and say why it was good. Pick a repeat failure and ask what the history told you. Pick a blank one and ask what happened.
Do it without blame. The point is to show the team that someone reads what they write. Within a month the records get longer.
Then use the data for something the fitters care about. Show the machine that ate 30 hours of their nights last quarter. Use that to win the spare they've been asking for. Use it to move a PPM task that never finds anything. When engineers see their records turn into spares, kit and fewer call-ins, they'll keep writing.
Contractors and new starters fill it in too
Every engineer who works on your kit should write to the same system. That includes the agency fitter on nights and the specialist who came in for the servo drive.
It's often the visiting engineer who finds the real cause. If their findings go home in their van, you'll pay to find it again. Give them a login, or a paper job sheet that someone types up the next morning. Put it in the induction for contract engineers so it happens from day one.
It works the other way too. A good history is what lets an outside engineer help you fast. When you call someone in on a breakdown, the first thing they'll ask is what's been tried. A clean CMMS answers that in two minutes. A blank one means they spend the first hour of a paid callout learning what your own team already knew.
Don't buy your way out of it
When a CMMS isn't used, the usual answer is a new CMMS. Sometimes the old one really is that bad. If it is, read our guide to choosing a CMMS before you sign anything.
More often the software is fine. The habit is the problem. A new system with the same 40 fields and the same silence from management will be empty in six months.
Here's our view. Fix the habit on the system you've got first. If the team is writing good records on a bad system, you'll know exactly what to ask for in a new one.
What to do on Monday
- Cut the breakdown job form to five fields, and make free text the default.
- Put a tablet or phone app on the shop floor, where the fitters work.
- Start a ten-minute weekly review of three records at the handover.
- Give every contract engineer a way to log their work before they leave site.
* PUWER inspection record-keeping rule correct as of 1 November 2026. Check PUWER on legislation.gov.uk for the latest. Paragraph numbers refer to L22, fourth edition (2014, amended 2018).