Production lines can stop and that’s already bad. But there are worse things than an operational disruption, like a failed compressor ruining a batch of dairy or a missed inspection violating FDA standards. That means product loss, non-compliance production, and revenue on the line.
In the food and beverage industry, maintenance is more than just keeping machines running. It plays a critical role in ensuring safety, maintaining product quality, and meeting regulatory requirements. That’s why generic maintenance software often falls short. You need more than a place to log tasks. Industrial plants need real-time control, audit-ready records, and SOPs that technicians actually follow.
That’s where modern maintenance software built for the food and beverage industry comes in. Designed to meet the high standards of today’s production environments, they bring structure, traceability, and accountability to every step of the process.
This guide breaks down to you the top 3 CMMS platforms built to meet that standard. Whether you're preparing for a surprise USDA visit or racing to keep a filling line in spec, these are the tools that bring structure, traceability, and execution to the frontlines of food production.
Why Food & Beverage Maintenance Has a Different Set of Rules
There’s no such thing as a harmless shortcut in this industry. Not when one missed check can contaminate a batch, or one undocumented task can fail an audit. In food production, everything must be traceable and every failure visible. One missed step, one undocumented fix, and you're not just facing a line stoppage, you’re risking a compliance breach that could trigger a recall or shut down operations entirely.
Unlike other industries, Food & Beverage maintenance doesn’t operate in isolation. It’s directly tied to sanitation protocols, HACCP plans, and safety inspections. Every task performed, or even skipped for that matter, can affect product integrity and regulatory status.
And regulators? They don’t care how many PMs your team ran last month. They want proof: timestamped records, technician names, digital trails that show each inspection, repair, and validation was done by the book. That’s why maintenance logs scribbled on whiteboards or spreadsheets won’t hold up when the FDA walks in.
This is where traditional CMMS platforms start to crack since, in food & beverage, the system needs to be more than functional, it also needs to be compliant. That means:
- Structuring SOPs that match your sanitation cycles and critical control points.
- Recording task execution with audit-grade detail automatically.
- Ensuring mobile-first access so technicians can log work right where it happens.
- Storing everything in one place, retrievable in seconds when the inspector asks.
Learn more about how CMMS supports food safety and compliance.
What Food & Beverage Teams Should Look for in a CMMS
When there are so many implications with audits and compliance, the maintenance job isn’t just to keep machines running, but to keep production clean, safe, and compliant, all without burning your team out in the process.
So if you’re evaluating CMMS platforms for a food or beverage plant, skip the sales fluff. Focus on what actually impacts your operation day to day. A good system will definitely organize your team's work, but it should also elevate their productivity, establish standards, and make sure no task gets skipped, misrecorded, or done out of spec.
Take a look at what you should be looking for in a CMMS:
- Work Order Management Built for the Floor: If your technicians need a desktop to close a task, you’ve already lost time. The CMMS must support mobile execution with offline access, intuitive UX, and minimal clicks to document and complete work in real time.
- SOP-Embedded Tasks: Checklists, repair instructions, parts lists, all of it should be embedded directly in the work order. Especially in regulated or high-variability environments, structured SOPs drive consistency, reduce error, and ensure tribal knowledge becomes standardized procedure.
- Parts and Inventory Linked to Tasks: A disconnected parts system leads to idle time. The best CMMS platforms pull from live inventory data, linking parts and tools directly to work orders, so techs know exactly what’s needed and where to find it, before they walk out.
- Backlog and KPI Visibility in Real Time: Monthly reports don’t cut it. You need live views of technician workloads, overdue tasks, and downtime risks across lines or facilities. Look for systems that surface MTBF, MTTR, and task status instantly, not buried in exports.
- Scheduling and Prioritization That Reflects Reality: Drag-and-drop planners are now table stakes. Your system should allow workload balancing by technician, area, or shift, while also letting you prioritize based on asset criticality, not just task age.
- Audit-Ready Compliance Support: For industries under FDA, ISO, or OSHA scrutiny, the CMMS should provide timestamped logs, inspection records, and exportable reports out of the box. The system itself should become your audit trail.
- Multi-Site Coordination with Centralized Oversight: If you're managing more than one plant, you need global visibility with local control. Filter by site, area, or asset, and compare performance across locations, all without switching tools or building custom views.
The 3 Best CMMS Software for Food & Beverage in 2025
Not all CMMS platforms are built with the production line in mind, and even fewer are ready for the regulatory and operational demands of food & beverage. So, to help you save time researching, we analyzed dozens of platforms and narrowed it down to the three that actually meet the standard.
Not based on feature lists, but on how well they solve real problems in real plants: late work orders, noncompliant repairs, idle techs, inventory chaos, and audit-day panic.
Here’s where they stand and why it matters:
1. Tractian
Best for: Food & Beverage teams that need real-time execution, audit-proof documentation, and technician adoption.
Tractian doesn’t just help teams track work, but it helps them prove it. Built specifically for asset-intensive environments, Tractian’s CMMS is floor-first and compliance-ready from day one. No clunky modules and no third-party add-ons. Everything’s natively integrated and designed to enforce standards where it matters most, on the line.
The platform turns tribal knowledge into structured SOPs automatically, embeds those directly into work orders, and ensures every action is traceable. And because it’s mobile-native with offline access, nothing slips through the cracks. Tasks get done when and where they happen, with no back-and-forth, no memory-based logging, and no lost access, even if your network is not working properly.
Also, no other CMMS on this list combines SOP enforcement, offline execution, and built-in compliance as a single, technician-first workflow.
Why it works for F&B:
- Audit-ready out of the box: Logs, SOPs, inspections, and reports—timestamped and exportable
- Technician-first UX: Real-time task execution, even offline
- Full asset lifecycle visibility: MTBF, backlog, task response, and inventory usage in one dashboard
- Structured SOP enforcement: No task can be closed without following the correct steps
What real customers say:
- “Having accurate, traceable maintenance records at our fingertips made audits less stressful and boosted our confidence across the board.”, says Anthony Aliaga, Plant Engineer, The Fillo Factory
- “I'm really impressed by the reliability metrics that Tractian is able to calculate in real time, and the level of detail when it comes to the failure modes and the insight generation. Tractian has really improved our asset availability.”, says Gautam Sane, Senior Reliability Engineer, CP Kelco
- “I like that I can track all of our assets from one location. If a motor is having issues in one part of the plant , and then another on the other side of the plant I am able to basically troubleshoot both motors in one location”, says Nicholas D., a Maintenance Lead Supervisor.
Pricing: Starts at $60/user/month. Includes AI-generated SOPs, mobile mode, inventory linking, and white-glove onboarding with data migration.
2. UpKeep
Best for: Teams starting digital transformation who need speed and simplicity over depth
UpKeep positioned itself early as the go-to mobile CMMS, and for teams looking to move off paper or spreadsheets quickly, it delivers. The platform can be lightweight and fast to deploy, even though some customers complain about difficulty of use. For F&B teams with basic needs or less regulatory exposure, it checks the essential boxes: task tracking, asset logs, preventive scheduling.
That said, UpKeep struggles in more structured environments. SOP support is minimal, and audit-readiness isn’t built into the flow, it depends on user discipline. As your needs grow, you’ll likely need to supplement with spreadsheets, custom processes, or integrations.
Why it works for F&B:
- Quick setup and onboarding
- Clean mobile app for basic task logging
- Good for single-site operations without deep compliance requirements
You should consider:
- SOP enforcement isn’t native
- Limited visibility across multiple plants or technicians
- Compliance records often need to be built manually
What real customers say:
- “A great basic CMMS meant for day to day use, to keep work orders, scheduled maintenance and parts/inventory. Lacks a lot of the higher end features that experienced users would want to implement", says Lindsey H., a Maintenance Manager in Oil & Energy.
- “We all like it, but the glitches are too slow at being corrected. I really don't want to switch companies but it has come up recently. I like working with the support team, they always seem very willing to help. Unfortunately the solutions they provide are hardly ever agreeable with me”, says Jamie P., Grounds & Buildings Manager.
- “It allows us to keep a schedule on when we need to do maintenance on our machines. [But] When you mark one thing as failed on a task list instead of just making a work order for that individual item it will create individual work orders for everything in our PM.”, says a Verified User in Industrial Automation.
Pricing: Starts at $45/user/month for basic plans. Business+ plan includes more workflow control, at custom pricing.
3. Fiix (by Rockwell Automation)
Best for: Enterprise teams that need full IT integration
Fiix, acquired by Rockwell Automation in 2020, is a cloud-based CMMS platform originally designed for core maintenance functions and integration with enterprise systems. It can be a fit for multi-site operations that prioritize aligning CMMS data with tools like ERP, finance, or procurement platforms.
But with that depth comes friction. Fiix’s interface and setup aren’t floor-first, technician adoption can lag, and SOP standardization requires extra configuration. For plants with strong IT support and defined workflows, Fiix can be tuned to fit, but it’s not plug-and-play.
Why it works for F&B:
- Strong for multi-site oversight and compliance alignment
- Customizable reporting and ERP connections
- Supports digital signatures and audit trails
You should consider:
- Slower to deploy, heavier on admin setup
- SOPs must be built manually or via higher-tier configurations
- Not ideal for teams without internal tech support
What real customers say:
- “Very easy to use but reporting is not accurate at all”, says Mario M., a Maintenance Planner.
- “Navigating is not simple. Would be nice to be more user friendly", says a Verified User in Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing.
- “My overall experience with FIIX has been good. It feels like it is software that is better suited for smaller companies with little diversity in their inventory items", says Aaron M., who works as Inventory/Parts Supervisor.
Pricing: Starts at $75/user/month for Professional tier. Advanced features and full compliance tooling are gated behind Enterprise plans.
CMMS Software for Food & Beverage at a Glance
If you want to see more CMMS options, consider reading our 5 Best CMMS for Maintenance Teams.
Why Most CMMS Platforms Fail F&B Teams
Most CMMS software looks fine on paper. They track tasks, manage assets, and schedule PMs. But in a regulated environment like food and beverage, that’s not enough. If your system doesn’t enforce SOPs, log every move in real time, and prep your team for audits without warning, it’s just another place where things slip.
And that’s the difference with Tractian. It’s not retrofitted for mobile. It wasn’t repurposed from facility management. It was built from the ground up for fast-paced, compliance-driven, technician-led environments like yours.
It embeds standards into the task, makes logging automatic, surfaces KPIs without filters or exports. And most importantly, it helps your team get better with every job, not just busier.
From real-time backlog visibility to AI-powered SOPs and mobile-first execution, Tractian gives you more than a platform. It gives you total control over your operation.
