Does anyone have any thoughts (or words of wisdom) about preferred ways of archiving data from equipment maintenance management systems?
Do you clean up jobs databases and archive closed jobs (for instance)? And how about parts data ... do requests and orders get archived on a yearly basis (at the end of the financial year, for example)? Do you hang on to records of parts no longer stocked?
Do you weed the files once a year or so? If you archive data, does it ever need to get recalled?
And how about cleaning up "garbage data" (stuff incorrectly entered, badly or incompletely coded, whatever). Does someone go through it all and either correct or delete junk data, or are you able to keep on top of this on a day-to-day basis?
Or do you just let the files grow ... thereby preserving the history (albeit at the expense of massive data files, and also perhaps increasing the risk of corrupting all that data)?
Can anyone let us know how the well-known packages deal with stuff like this? Is it (or can it) be done automatically, once a series of "rules" have been set up?
For what it's worth, my own thoughts are primarily that although I hate to lose data (that is, in general it should always be preserved), I also like to see "clean" and well-ordered database files. Traditionally, I have often seen files "closed" on an annual basis, but (to be honest) that was back in the days of limited data storage (small hard-drives - if you had one at all).
And (lastly) I have always liked to preserve the "equipment data" itself for more or less ever (or at least until the kit is finally condemned and removed). That is, historic PM dates, parts used, job numbers, notes ... and stuff like that for each item of equipment. That way the "equipment history" is maintained and preserved. When I say "archiving" I am really thinking about what used to be known as "Work Orders", and (as I say) parts and stock items, and (if you like) "financial" data.
