DLG confidently expects Fiix® CMMS technology to pay for itself within its first year by achieving a 10 per cent improvement in uptime and maintenance efficiency

 Australasian primary producers and processors with diverse and far-flung operations may take a leaf from the book of technology benefits earned by their counterpart DLG Group in Europe. DLG is Denmark’s largest producer of agricultural feedstock and a significant producer of natural vegetable oil, both of which are produced in Australia and New Zealand.

 The company – which originated as a farmer-owned cooperative – addressed production, processing and maintenance issues with software also available in Australasia, Rockwell Automation’s Fiix® CMMS technology. The results were evident from the outset.

Although the production processes in each site are nearly identical, the machines that run these processes are different in make, model, and age from one production line to the next. This has caused considerable complications for maintenance engineers in the past.

Because the production environment was so heterogenous, there was often no single standard and documented resolution for any given problem. Problems often presented differently on different production lines and machines.

Each time maintenance technicians were faced with this situation, they had to find the resolution for the problem from first principles.

Not only did this increase the time taken to find a resolution, but it also complicated the job of finding the root causes of common or recurring faults. Technicians found themselves treating symptoms, which varied from one production line to the next, rather than tackling the common causes of the issue.

The lack of a common inventory and tracking scheme for spare parts also caused problems. Often it would be possible to use the same spare part on a range of different makes and models of machinery.

But technicians might not know this was the case. And even if they did, they had no way of knowing if another site in the group had one of the compatible spare parts for their machine in stock. This led both to increased downtime and to unnecessary inventory duplication.

Multiple locations

Working closely with Rockwell Automation, the company deployed Fiix® Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) software across nine of its many locations: two manufacturing rapeseed oil and seven manufacturing animal feedstock.

DLG customised the platform’s interface to give its factory managers and engineers a priority view of their maintenance queues and related variables. And it worked with Rockwell Automation to develop bespoke interface set-ups for different roles within the business.

“One of the reasons we chose Fiix® CMMS software was its flexibility,” said DLG Continuous Improvement (CI) engineer Alex Rasksen “We did consider the plant-management module of our ERP.

“But we needed any system to be configurable for different tasks and roles and for different levels of technical expertise. The Fiix® CMMS was the system that most successfully offered this.”

Using the new CMMS platform, factory managers can continuously track their maintenance queue in real time. They can see which spare parts they have in stock, which other parts are compatible with their systems, and where within the DLG Group those compatible parts are located.

With a centralised single source of truth for all participating sites, engineers can quickly check any problem against other known issues and fixes. They can also correlate symptoms and causes across different systems and processes.

As well as factory managers and maintenance engineers, the new system has now been rolled out to cleaning crews and to selected third-party vendors.

Everyone who needs access to the maintenance platform now has a secure, highly detailed, real-time view of the data relevant to their job.

Result

Within a month of the first deployment, the plants involved in the initial rollout had already seen an improvement in meantime between failure (MTBF).

With a single source of truth for all maintenance issues across different sites, engineers can resolve issues faster. They can also share what they have learned with colleagues across different sites.

In this way, the engineers across plants are working to develop a knowledgebase of best practices. These are defined by process and sub-process, rather than by a specific machine.

This makes it possible to take insights gained on one production process then use and refine them to optimise similar processes on different production lines for the same product. It’s also made possible more efficient spare-parts management, helping to reduce costs and improve availability.

In this first phase, DLG Group is building not only a knowledgebase of best practices but also a cadre of engineers trained in the new, data-driven maintenance practices.

These practitioners will help the company deploy the new CMMS to further sites, after the initial phase of consolidation and optimisation.

“Our factory managers are already seeing a clear benefit in being able to manage and optimise their maintenance queues in real time. It improves their time-to-resolution but also their co-operation with other functions, such as the production planners. This has had an immediate benefit. And in the long term, we plan to build on that expertise to move to a fully data-driven, predictive maintenance setup,” said Alex Rasksen.

“DLG Group’s deployment strategy has been a model of best practice and innovation,” said Katarina Hart, country sales director, Nordics, Rockwell Automation.

“They have targeted a 10% increase in maintenance efficiency within the first year, which will more than pay for the investment in the new system. We absolutely expect them to at least meet this target. The effectiveness of the deployment is a testament to the power of computerised maintenance management.”

Challenge

• No unified process for tracking maintenance or inventory
• With no central inventory for spare parts, costs and downtime were inflated
• With no shared knowledgebase, technicians had to re-solve reoccurring problems

Solution

• Consolidated maintenance tracking in Fiix® Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) software
• Inventory management for all spare parts also consolidated in the CMMS
• Performance and uptime data now continually tracked using the CMMS
• Deployment customised for precision tracking of maintenance efficiency

Result

• Within a month, the company saw a marked improvement in meantime-between-failure (MTBF) rates
• Acceptance rates among employees across different roles have been high
• DLG is standardising maintenance and developing whole-organisation best practices
• Within a year, DLG expects 10% improvement in uptime and maintenance efficiency