CMMS Energizes Glass Company’s Maintenance Efforts

An enterprise-wide CMMS implementation can result in significant gains in asset reliability.

A three-step process helped a global glass manufacturer implement a CMMS in all of its facilities, resulting in notable asset-reliability gains.

An enterprise-wide CMMS implementation can result in significant gains in asset reliability.

A leading manufacturer of glass and glazing systems supplies glass for architectural, automotive, and technical applications to customers around the world. Operating in 28 countries, its business is divided into four regions: North America, South America, Europe, and Asia. Over time, the company sought to put increased emphasis on global maintenance excellence and the ability to standardize and benchmark metrics in all of its locations. Subsequently, the team of functional experts that focuses on automotive-glass production—which includes the company’s North American manager of Excellence in Maintenance—identified the need for a computerized maintenance management software (CMMS) system.

In early 2015, the company’s existing state of maintenance data was chaotic. While there was scattered use of existing software, plenty of valuable information was locked up in spreadsheets. The appointed functional team of experts searched for a CMMS solution with all the functions of the existing software, as well as a web-based solution with SAP interfacing capability, online training, live-chat support, and automatic updates. Company managers then defined requirements for the desired CMMS, starting with the fact it should be a software-as-a-service (SaaS) maintenance solution that offered access to real-time information, customizable asset hierarchies, and the ability to track equipment-performance trends and costs to maintain the assets.

The list of requirements also specified functionality in managing work orders and work requests, preventive maintenance, purchasing and inventory control, planning and scheduling, asset history, cost tracking, condition monitoring, document storage, and reporting. They determined that the solution offered by eMaint (eMaint.com, Marlton, NJ) was a good fit.

Multi-site implementations of anything can be challenging. In the case of its CMMS efforts, this manufacturer achieved notable success based on a methodical approach. It established goals and vision for the solution, built an asset hierarchy for greater control of equipment, and standardized processes across the entire corporation.

Steps to success

1. Establish goals and vision. The team began by mapping operations with the greatest needs, and prioritized implementation to locations with failing systems. The North American manager of Excellence in Maintenance stated that the key to quick implementation was understanding what a CMMS can do, establishing goals, and securing positive buy-in from management.

A formal project plan with milestones and goals was established. Formalizing the plan saved time and reduced costs along the way. By setting clear objectives to take advantage of the full potential of a CMMS, the company:

incorporated a defining phase to develop all pertinent data standards, ensuring consistent data collection

leveraged the knowledge of an experienced CMMS implementer for guidance

built a defined initial-implementation timeline to track progress and next steps.

Developing goals and a vision for how maintenance teams will function alongside a fully implemented CMMS is crucial. It is also important to document and communicate goals for the role of maintenance personnel in facilitating organizational success, the company’s approach to maintenance, and how a CMMS will support business processes. As it turned out, upfront planning enabled the company to be up and running in 30 days.

Asset hierarchies allow organizations to easily identify key assets on which to focus reliability and maintenance efforts.

2. Build an asset hierarchy. Nine plants across the company’s North American operations were targeted to use the CMMS. About 10,000 assets were structured within an asset hierarchy, ranked according to their criticality, from the highest level to subordinate parts. Establishing asset hierarchies (as illustrated in Step 2 chart) allows organizations to easily identify key assets on which to focus maintenance and reliability efforts versus all tangible pieces, parts, equipment, and rooms.

3. Standardize across all locations. After using a financial model to establish their hierarchical structure, the company set up a template to standardize across all locations to effectively look at performance and analyze key metrics, including uptime and downtime. Completion rates for preventive maintenance are a leading metric the company can use because of the potential impact on operations. If a piece of critical equipment fails, it can shut down the entire plant, and have a negative impact on promises of quality and on-time delivery.

Analysis of metrics recorded and tracked through reports and dashboards within a CMMS opens ever-wider windows to critical business insights.

Results

Prior to leveraging a standardized CMMS across its operations, many of the manufacturer’s maintenance decisions were based on tribal knowledge. Today, metrics are recorded and tracked daily on reports and dashboards within the CMMS. These tools allow users to convert CMMS data into business insights by analyzing historical costs and trends.

The manufacturer’s team developed a metrics center tab on the CMMS dashboard to provide live data on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as preventive-maintenance (PM) completion rates per production-line asset. The company’s engineers use these dashboards as a home base to see everything they need, including, among other things, 24/7 activity, downtime, and open work orders.

At the beginning of each month, the CMMS system is used to report on maintenance operational metrics, including PM completion rates and technical downtime performance at each plant. These reports show how each plant stacks up against the rest, based on critical performance benchmarks; motivate employees to focus on key metrics; and increase efficiency across the board. With this level of access and organization, the company sustains a 95% preventive-maintenance completion rate.

The manufacturer also uses CMMS to support capital planning. For example, if the company is “hurting” in a certain area on a piece of equipment that’s increasingly costly to maintain, it uses data to compare repair and replacement costs. The CMMS also supports short- and long-term investment decisions.

Before its global CMMS implementation, stakeholders couldn’t track key metrics or gain insight into equipment status. As a result of the enterprise-wide CMMS implementation, the company now tracks and analyzes key metrics, standardizes performance and, ultimately, supports its emphasis on global excellence in maintenance. MT

For more information, visit eMaint, a Fluke company, Marlton, NJ, eMaint.com.