Having selected Mainsaver, the CMMS project team concluded that the most effective implementation strategy would comprise two elements: (i) creating a detailed register of every maintainable plant asset so that parts and labour costs could be assigned to them (ii) engendering a real-time, online maintenance environment, rather than a system in which it was only possible to generate reports retrospectively.

Mainsaver’s implementation was geared around the expectation that production operatives would be using the system to log a significant number of maintenance requests. To speed up that process, shop-floor staff using the CMMS to report a breakdown simply had to select from a short pick-list of faults allocated to each machine, rather than spending time trying to diagnose the problem.

With the breakdown logged, engineers were able to view those details immediately and respond. The ultimate objective was that real-time visibility of plant performance and associated maintenance activity would extend across the entire site to include operators and shift leaders, all the way up to senior management.

As well as recording the ‘unplanned’ engineering works, Mainsaver was uploaded with the entire preventative maintenance schedule. Ownership of PM was then divided between four engineering teams, each of which was allocated responsibility for a designated work area to ensure optimum use of the allotted daily time window. Details of each engineer’s training and competencies were also logged within Mainsaver so that each PM task could be allocated to a technician with the correct skill-set.