Well the cmms was bought for IT dept more than maintenance but we do have a couple of people trying to put in good effort to set it up correctly. Thats why I came here hoping to find some good information to help us make this effort worth while. If you think of anything else please feel free to let me know. Thanks again for eveything so far.

There are two things I consider critical to your implementation.
1.) Consistency in data. I know I said this before but 99.9% of our customers miss this when they prepare data for load. Decisions should be made on things like; will the word inch be "inch", "in", "in.", " " ". Is pump going to be "Pump", "Pmp", etc... This may seem like silly examples but the devil is in the details. As a secondary note, if you had problems in the past with data being correct, you need to spend the time validating it so that it is accurate going forward.

2.) I assume your Maintenance Work Flows are detailed and documented. If not, get it done. You must then move through the process within the CMMS from requesting work to close out of the work order to make sure the software will support you. If does not, and assuming your current process works well, then do not change the process to fit your new CMMS. Instead, do the configuration changes to the software to support your process.

These things do cost time and money and unfortunately, since this is an "IT Project" as you stated, you will probably have to be creative to get buy in from upper management to do this work up front; especially if the budget is fixed and these things were not accounted for.

If you have done this work already then, "Congratulations!". Your transition from your current application to JD Edwards should go much smoother.

We are in the process of selecting the CMMS, and IT decided that we must go with JDE because there is where we handle purchasing and inventory, from my personal point of view what we need is a system designed to solve maintenance problems and not a finance/prosuction/acounting system that has a "maintenance module" attached to "solve" all factory problems. Is possible that JDE is different?.
Mike: what do you think after starting to be involve in the same problem?

Choosing a system is a business desicion. In todays world the odds are in favor of systems that are integrated, over stand alone systems that serve only to one department.

The best thing for you is to define your maintenance work flows / needs / requirements and ensure the CMMS attend them and/or customization is implemented to fulfill them. Have a justification / business case to support your requirements.

Since IT and Finance have already seen the benefits and cost savings of one integrated system that will serve the needs of Purchasing, Warehouse, Operations, etc., etc. and (probably?, hopefully?, partially?) Maintenance; you need to put figure$$$ to your personal point of view to prove them that another solution is the right thing to do for the company.

In other words "money talks" .

AMG I think that it would be best if we had a seperate cmms that would tie into the JDE. Right now I use Megamations an internet system that does what I need and they tell me they can tie into JDE but their is not much buy in at this point from our end. A lot of maintenance people I have talked with are not happy with JDE so I am looking for as much information as I can to make this a good transfer over and deal with it the best I can. Thanks again for the comments.