Achieving control over assets, targeted maintenance, better control of the maintenance team and their time, and more effective reporting, all with Agility CMMS
Founded in 1819 with headquarters in Vienna, Wienerberger is the world’s largest producer of bricks and clay blocks, and clay roof tiles. Represented in 30 countries with 197 production sites, Weinerberger supports and enables the construction industry to create a better future for the built environment. In the UK alone, they have head offices, showrooms, and factories, employing over 1,500 staff.
In 2016, the team was faced with the ever-increasing challenge of how to manage their maintenance and assets more effectively. Ali Ben Henda, Continuous Improvement Manager described:
“Before Agility, we had no clear picture of what was happening across our 14 sites and we didn’t have a ‘one source of truth’ when it came to managing assets. Maintenance was delivered on a case-by-case basis and not collated across our 14 manufacturing operations. Agility was particularly attractive to us as it standardized the way we were doing things, allowing us to make data-driven decisions on our maintenance team’s timetable.”
Agility was first introduced to Wienerberger UK in 2016 and usage of the solution has grown to 14 sites with:
“Once we introduced Agility, we were able to start gathering our data in a more consistent and cohesive way and we were able to better manage our asset maintenance timetable
Agility is designed for many different businesses across lots of different sectors however, it is not rigid, and we didn’t have to change lots of our processes to fit Agility, Agility was and is flexible enough to meet with our specific requirements.
I can see everything from the Work Order List to the Equipment Structure, to Job Analysis (completion, open, etc.), to Labour Utilisation, Priority Codes, Shift Logs, Checklists, and more. The way Agility has pulled all this information together for us and centralized it is now vital to our business and makes life so much easier when it comes to reporting.
We have checklists on all our PPMs to simplify our maintenance, we’ve introduced mobile phones so that the team can access these on the go and have all the information they need to get the job done. It also means they can complete a job there and then with any comments and photographs, so it makes the whole process far quicker than them having to complete the admin later. It also means we have realistic timescales as to how quickly jobs are being completed.
We have integrated a Criticality Factor based on the Failure Mode, Effects and Critical Analysis (FMECA) matrix from the PIP+ guidance. In addition, we’ve also created QR codes using FLOC (Functional LOCation) numbers, and we’re integrating Meerkat Continuous Monitoring sensors through the custom API.
If I had to describe using Agility in a nutshell, for me, it is pivotal that all our data is in one place and that we have visibility of the reports. Things like maintenance time control, job completion by job type, outstanding work orders by priority and by overdue timescale, jobs raised, jobs by craft, and of course maintenance against our KPIs. It’s all there in visual dashboards that I can easily share with others so that we can all understand what’s going on.
The team at SSG Insight have supported us throughout and I love the way the team are always looking at new things for the software and new technologies to integrate with. There’s lots of innovation, and we’re involved in that process. The team often visit to see how we are, but also to see the Agility solution in action and understand exactly how we’re using it, why we do things a certain way, and more. They try to work with us to help us maximise our use of the software and to ensure that they are evolving the solution to meet our future needs.
The support team are quick to reply and respond, which is helpful. Any of our users can access support as and when they need it, and then we share the responses across our teams in case it’s of use to them too. Plus, if it’s something that needs to go to development, the SSG Insight team escalate it, but they keep you informed the whole time.
Don’t get me wrong, not every solution is perfect, but they take the challenges and problems we have as a business and try to help us find ways to solve them with Agility. Relationships wise, the team do a really good job. We work closely with our account manager, but we know the team in product, support, the tech consultants, and many others, as well.
In addition to the SSG Insight team visiting our sites, we’ve been on some training and have found the courses useful. We also like the complimentary monthly webinars which showcase different aspects of the software. Sometimes it’s something we’re already using, sometimes it’s not, but it always sheds light on something we didn’t know which is great and helps us to utilize the solution more effectively.
Training and the webinars, help to bring together our teams across the different sites. All the sites are on an Agility journey, but they’re not all quite at the same stage. However, bringing all our systems together under one umbrella with a centralised view across our sites has made a massive difference for our business.”
There is now detailed data behind every single asset. Everything is aligned, everything is there, and our reporting is now far easier as we have that comprehensive visibility which we lacked before Agility.
Ali Ben Henda, Continuous Improvement Manager
“Looking ahead, we’re working with our Account Manager and having some great conversations about the art of the possible in terms of connecting through the API, taking our internal systems, and connecting them to Agility, and what this could mean.
We are also looking at inventory and stores as we’d like to make more of this. We’re keen to bring in other people here to share what others have done, and the knowledge from the SSG Insight team is great for this. Plus, the team openly encourages customers to talk to each other and we’ve made some connections on the webinars, and at the annual user day which is always worthwhile attending. There are users in our industry, similar ones, and completely different ones, but no matter which industry they are in, it’s so useful to understand what others are doing with Agility.
With Agility, we have better control over our assets, more targeted maintenance, better management of the maintenance team and their time, and more effective reporting. We’ve even added Agility to our Centre of Excellence where we train our apprentices, so that they can use it in the training Centre before heading into a live environment.”
To understand more about Agility CMMS, and how it supports the manufacturing industry, please contact a member of our global team today at info@ssginsight.com.
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