Maintenance and Production working in harmony

Muller is the largest milk supplier and distributor in Great Britain, with ten major dairies throughout the country supplying homes directly and major supermarket chains.

Customer

Muller Milk & Ingredients

Sector

Food manufacturing

Situation

Large-scale investment in additional maintenance personnel to support manufacturing efficiency improvements, but using a legacy CMMS that was cumbersome to operate and difficult to retrieve data from.

Implementation

After comparing eight different systems, Muller selected Mainsaver on the basis of its functional richness and ease to use. It was also felt that Spidex shared Muller’s vision of winning hearts and minds to drive improvement through use of technology.

 

Mainsaver was rolled out across six dairies in under a year, during which time it provided a platform of reliable management data that helped support increased efficiency within maintenance.

 

Prior to the installation of Mainsaver, much of the maintenance activity across the various sites consisted of responding to breakdowns. This was one the first issues addressed. New PM schedules were created in conjunction with production management, a move which initiated a newer, more cohesive relationship between the two departments. Another interesting move was that the company referred to Mainsaver as its “Asset Care” software (rather than ‘Maintenance Management’) which encouraged operations staff to view the system as part of their day-to- day roles.

 

As a result, data held in Mainsaver provides the basis for weekly multi-disciplinary meetings in which particular aspects of site manufacturing performance are analysed in detail and corrective actions agreed. Performance figures against standard metrics such as response time, adherence to schedule and planned vs unplanned work ratio are available to all.

Result

Huge reduction in maintenance ‘firefighting’ – around 70% of engineering jobs are now planned. Significantly less production time lost to breakdowns. Major customer audit highlighted “industry-leading initiatives, including the maintenance management system.”

“We now know where to focus our resources most effectively because we have access to accumulated maintenance costs for each site and every asset. It’s a huge step forward.”

Scott Carty
Engineering Systems & Support Manager

Next steps

Subsequent stages of the project included linking Mainsaver with an OEE measurement system, from which machine stoppages could instantly trigger maintenance work orders, colour-coded by criticality.

Spidex has award-winning products, tried and tested implementation methods and dedicated after-sales support. We’ll support you every step of the way.