Summary
Offering quality requires investing from the outset, but it is the claim that guarantees maintaining services at full capacity, the investment involved in the indicated maintenance plan must not forget at any time the training of the personnel involved, nor the necessary material resources as well as the program of medium and long term renovation.
The proposed maintenance control information system shows the existence of an information system for all the interventions that maintenance personnel carry out in the facilities, so it should be taken into account that computerization is a means of improving maintenance management.. It will not solve anything if a maintenance methodology has not been previously established, the best of the information systems will not work if it has not been implemented correctly and is fed continuously.
In general, it has been pointed out how to use the increasingly widespread computer tools, in a simple way, trying to extract from the large amount of information that is handled, some data that supported by graphs allow to easily evaluate the maintenance of a hotel.
INTRODUCTION
Maintenance plays a very important role in any energy, materials, currency, time saving program, etc. Well, an efficient and productive company or institution that is not properly maintained would not be possible. Maintenance is the activity carried out by man with the help of tools, aimed at achieving the proper functioning of a facility or environment, on which man depends to some extent.
To guarantee the useful life of the facilities and equipment, it is necessary to draw up an annual maintenance plan that guarantees the adequate maintenance cycle, the scheduling of the workforce and the necessary material assurance. It also allows to reconcile the need for repairs with the need for services. An agile method is necessary to distribute the work to be carried out, the workforce and material resources throughout the year.
Maintenance should achieve the reduction of unforeseen breakdowns and repair time, seek to prolong the useful life of the components, achieve the effects of saving resources and thereby reduce the cost of maintaining the facilities and contribute to improving the quality of service.
In this case, this work focuses on the maintenance that hotel facilities must receive. The maintenance of a hotel is very important and involves a series of actions that must be done as time passes, on a scheduled basis, what is called preventive maintenance. This type of maintenance is extremely important because with it a good operation of all the installations is achieved, preventing them from breaking and thereby losing work time.
Comfort is the basis of satisfying the well-being needs that the guest seeks, as well as an incentive for the hotel worker that implies order and maintenance of the facilities, which constitutes an economic and image factor for the hotel. Technological advancement and the ever-increasing requirements for the most appropriate services translate into comfort and satisfaction needs that are only achieved with the provision of clean, orderly, comfortable and safe services.
When the information technologies are applied, a group of results can be obtained, among which we can mention the increase in efficiency and effectiveness in the productive and service spheres, optimization of resources of all kinds, increase in the quality of life, and services and therefore an increase in productivity.
The fundamental purpose of the information system is to serve as the basis for optimal decision-making to ensure compliance with the tasks set for the organization.
Regarding the maintenance activity, there are multiple factors to take into account: objectives, functions, form of execution, form of execution, way of directing it, methods to follow, as well as the system to apply. Currently, the improvement of these factors is sought, and among them, in particular, the one related to the maintenance system to be applied, which must guarantee high operational reliability of the equipment with the minimum cost.
Development
Es una necesidad incuestionable el mantener hoteles. Ahora bien, mantener no significa solamente reconstruir y reparar sino que también se debe reparar con anticipación. Es exigible crear la conciencia de que hay que mantener los hoteles. Se sabe que con el tiempo se produce una degradación motivada por diferentes circunstancias sean ambientales, o de otra índole y lo que se debe procurar es buscar ya desde el propio diseño las condiciones más idóneas en todo sentido, desde materiales adecuados y con buena calidad hasta la buen accesibilidad a cualquier elemento.
Nowadays, the figure of a person in charge is assumed, assuming the function of “Facility Management”, which consists of servicing the business, planning and providing services for the business, determining space levels, planning budgets and controlling the fixed and variable costs of operations., manage the performance of buildings, budget, personnel and time, manage changes, be professional. Facility Management is planning, design and management of facilities, resources and equipment in a discipline that includes:
• The detailed description of the premises, their use, furniture and components.
• Its maintenance
• Its adaptation to new uses and provisions
• Your inventory and updated valuation
• Its conservation and periodic updating
• Planning and project of your future needs
• The tasks involved (drawing plans, checking conditions)
Facility Management Benefits
• Speed and success of decision making (good information)
• Solving specific problems within the general content
• Improved efficiency in the use of physical space
• Reduction of the space necessary for the future
• Reduction in the number of relocation and changes
• Improvement of the work environment
• Standardization
• Reduction of energy consumption
• Better use of electrical, communication, protection and security services.
Speed and success in conjunctural adaptations
Among other aspects related to the mission of this manager there is one that is essential: in-depth knowledge of the entire hotel. Knowing it is knowing how, where and when to act to avoid unnecessary and subsequent actions. All this can be assimilated in these hotels where there is so much movement of personnel and where the level of quality demand must be more rigorous. The use of corrective maintenance is not enough, but maintenance must be focused as an element of utmost importance to achieve the total quality that the hotel must offer.
The actions must therefore be the result of a thoughtful and effective maintenance plan that is capable of making each and every one of them involved feel involved. Any audit, whether external or internal, must demonstrate that it is acting in accordance with the requirements of the service offered. And all of this forces a great deal, from the highest level of demand to the last link in the organizational chain, and based on differentiated approaches or needs. Offering quality requires investing from the outset, but it is the claim that guarantees maintaining services at full capacity; The investment involved in the indicated maintenance plan must not forget at any time the training of the personnel involved on the one hand, nor the material resources necessary on the other,nor the medium and long-term renovation program, so as not to reach the end of a stage or cycle and find obsolete facilities. The field of action of Facility Management in this sense is transcendental; for your knowledge you must know what you need, get your budget accepted and then meet it, improving costs as much as possible and demanding and increasing the level of quality required.
In general, the maintenance issue has to enter more into the minds of hotel managers, especially when it comes to preventive maintenance. A hotel is not a property that is built at a given time and nothing else is repaired when it has a leak, breakdown, etc., no, we must avoid arriving at this because if we wait for the first leak to come out and the first breakdown the repair investment may have an extremely high cost or the hotel loses category, instead we can avoid all this with preventive, planned maintenance, maintenance that anticipates problems to avoid problems such as poor customer service, discomfort for workers who in the end will negatively affect the image of the hotel, losing customers and therefore foreign exchange.
We must distinguish between maintenance and maintenance service, understanding the latter in addition to maintenance itself a certain planning for the renovation of facilities in the medium and long term, allowing the necessary investments to be made with adequate anticipation and gradual implementation, it is an aspect of fundamental importance.
A hotel without maintenance, without maintenance for a certain number of years will lose much more market value than if it were well maintained. They are very narrow ways of seeing reality. One of the things that should not be allowed is to delay maintenance due to scarcity of resources, it is clear that resources are scarce and often take time to reach hotels, so hotel managers should not wait for the time to repair the hotel to take steps to acquire the resources for said activity,the managers must be based on the search for the necessary resources for the repair, so that it begins and through proper planning, know exactly what is needed so that once the repair has started it does not stop and execute it in the shortest possible time and with the best possible quality to avoid in this way an increase in repair costs and achieve the incorporation of the hotel into its functions as soon as possible.
Costs are also linked to quality and maintenance is directly linked to quality. When we speak of quality, we speak of providing good service, but in order to provide this good service, it is necessary to perform good maintenance in order to offer quality and comfort to the client. Maintenance is part of a group of functions where it is possible to fall into error when trying to turn it into a purely economic function.
The hotel must be maintained with a self-control starting from the same manager, with a quality self-control that has to work taking into account the most immediate demands of customers.
Practical criteria for evaluation and maintenance control
The quality and level of complexity of hotel facilities and equipment have increased significantly as a consequence of the incidence of various factors such as the increased demand for comfort in work areas, the establishment of very complex communication networks, the the demand for ever stricter compliance with safety regulations, the improvement and deepening of the different types of regularities and the growing sensitivity towards ecology, which leads to guaranteeing healthy indoor environments and reducing contamination of the external environment to the minimum possible.
The need to ensure a correct image forces attention to aspects such as proper cleaning of all visible elements, to properly preserve finishes both indoors and outdoors, to maintain adequate levels of lighting and to maintain graphic signaling systems at day.
On the other hand, energy costs have increased in such a remarkable way that they represent one of the important parts and therefore become one of the headings to be managed efficiently.
In general, the function of maintenance is to take care of managing and solving the aforementioned aspects, not being a simple activity against what may seem at first glance, since it covers a high, since it covers a large number of specialties, performed in most cases by various companies and different types of personnel.
Fundamental elements of a maintenance program.
Regardless of the aspects pointed out up to now, any maintenance management computer system needs a database of maintenance records to describe the hotel to be maintained. On the other hand there are some working documents that must necessarily appear to them referred to below.
• The databases
From a technical point of view, the first important work to be done in the implementation of a computer system is the description of the hotel.
This description is nothing more than a systematic decomposition of all those elements that are going to be kept. Depending on the type of computerization chosen, the need for a more or less exhaustive description of the hotel. Two decomposition modes can be established: by subsystems (covers, fire protection, air conditioners) or by items (boiler, burner, valves, extinguishers, fire hydrant).
In any case, you must have a list of associated maintenance operations and their periodicity in accordance with current regulations.
• The fundamental documents of maintenance management.
There are many benefits of some computer systems. We can find listings of all kinds, calendars, calculation of workload, control of spare parts, subcontracted companies, etc. but without a doubt the basic documents to establish a minimum systematization are the following.
- Inventory
- Visit planning
- Work parts
- Control of pending costs
- Control of realized costs
- Historical archive
• Analysis of hotel behavior.
The adoption of a computerized system must always allow feedback from the system, that is, it must allow processes to be modified based on the experience that is accumulated. The maintenance plan is an open document, in addition a correct exploitation of the historical file will allow to know the operation of certain contractual solutions and devices, so that future investments can be saved.
Computerization will allow:
- Establish uniform maintenance criteria.
- Control the execution of maintenance.
- Check the suitability of constructive, technical or material solutions.
- Control the intervention of third parties.
- Control corrective maintenance.
- Determine the maintenance budgets based on experience.
The long-term objective should be to achieve a degree of knowledge that allows establishing the parameters from which it is possible to design hotels with solutions that, through a minimum of preventive maintenance, guarantee a minimum of corrective maintenance during the life period. Useful.
As a summary, it should be taken into account that:
- Computerization is a means of improving maintenance management.
- Computerization is not always necessary.
- Each case requires a different level of computerization.
- Computerization will not solve anything if a maintenance methodology has not been previously established.
- The best of the computer systems will not work if it has not been raised correctly and / or is not powered continuously.
Considering that prevention is better than cure, how can hotel aging problems be anticipated or solved?
Maintenance should also incorporate replenishments. The maintenance study must include the replacement phases and must establish, within preventive maintenance, temporary goals for the replacement of materials, an end time for the hotel, and regulate the actions so that this hotel, at the end of this estimated cycle, is in use condition, to be able to find in other maintenance and replacement cycles. Therefore it is imminent already from the first phase to solve the different aging problems of the hotel. Partial replacement of elements must be carried out so that the characteristics of the hotel are the same as at the beginning. Maintenance actions are scheduled at different levels, from a simple lubrication to global replacement of the equipment.
Hotels have many components and the useful life of each one is different. If when a component has lost its ability to provide a certain service, we do not replace it, it will cause the degradation of others.
Going deeper into this aspect, the lack of correction, the lack of maintenance of any part of the hotel or of any installation, not only costs more expensive for the replacement of the part that has been damaged, but it often leads to much more damage. serious in the rest of the hotel. Drains, pipes, hot and cold water plumbing, etc. They tend to have a shorter life than other elements of the construction and if they are not maintained, if they are not taken care of, damage will start to appear in the hotel at a cost much higher than the replacement of the installation.
Maintenance control information system
During the last years, a need has been found in the hotel sector to simplify and optimize maintenance management.
Due to its flexibility and functionality, the proposed system adapts to any size of hotel, ensuring the configuration of a system that meets your needs. Easy to use by maintenance personnel, this program will allow you to easily access all the system options through the different menus and submenus presented.
This information system aims to make maintenance management more agile and organized. This system shows the power, efficiency and ability to capture, use and store the information of all the interventions that in terms of maintenance are concerned.
It is demonstrated with this new information system that computerization is an important means of improving maintenance management.
Conclusions
Maintaining hotel facilities is a necessity. For this, it is necessary to create in the mentality of the leaders and workers the necessary awareness that these facilities must be maintained. A hotel without maintenance loses image and category, something that negatively influences its economy.
Initially it is necessary to know the mission and responsibilities of a maintenance service and then to achieve good management it is necessary to know and have defined objectives such as the availability of facilities and equipment, increased useful life, effective and long-term economic savings, of resources and energy and the control of energy consumption, monitoring of maintenance plans, reliability of facilities, control of historical information, taking care of the image of the hotel in relation to its physical environment, analysis of costs and use labor and materials, etc.
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