History of CMMS Software

Over time, CMMS has transformed to meet maintenance needs across company sizes and industries.

According to Jeff O’Brien of Maintenance Assistant Inc recently writing on American Machinist, the evolution of CMMS started in only the biggest factories with the most computing power.

The First CMMS

Around 1965, CMMS began as punch cards for reminding technicians to complete tasks, and later evolved into printed paper. Maintenance technicians would hand in work order checklists to data-entry clerks for submission to the CMMS.

Prior to the mid-1980s, maintenance departments within manufacturing organizations were between 1-12% of a factory’s workforce. Companies investing in the technology managed only the largest asset-intensive businesses on the market.

Scaled Down with LAN Connection

The next generation of CMMS came in the 1980s when it became possible to scale down computers. Small to mid-sized companies were able to invest in the technology for the first time with the emergence of affordable hardware.

Throughout the 1990s, companies were able to customize their CMMS solutions and operate through a local-area network (LAN) connection to quickly share data between computers for the first time. With customization came a variety of software features.

Browser and Cloud-based

Moving into the early 2000s, CMMS adapted to the web for browser-based access on local servers. System updates became more complex with highly customized needs for each client.

Around the mid-2000s with the rise of the internet, vendors began offering entirely web-hosted solutions with their own servers. Vendors became responsible for backing up the system’s data instead of the company’s IT department.

CMMS Today

The latest generation of CMMS was born on the cloud only in the past few years.

This type of system has a multi-tenant architecture, allowing all clients to access the same application. Each user logs on to the system with a unique account, but has access to the same basic security, upgrades and features. This way, vendors are able to provide fast support with no downtime, and clients don’t need a dedicated IT team.

Cloud computing continues to dominate the tech space as more people realize the benefits. Some trends happening now with CMMS include: