Challenge: Overcoming Reactive Maintenance
Like many other manufacturing teams, leading UK tire manufacturer Dunlop Aircraft Tyres started its maintenance journey rooted in reactive methods, which is not a reliable or effective way to keep a manufacturing facility running. They were constrained by a lack of on-site engineers, which meant doubling the workload of the engineers who were on-site.
Additionally, maintenance data was stored in an in-house database built on Microsoft Access. The database had no capabilities for scheduling or planning maintenance work, and those tasks would be done on paper and Excel.
This slowed operations tremendously, making it even harder to escape the daily firefighting that comes with a reactive strategy. If Dunlop Aircraft Tyres Plant and Controls Engineer Michael Thomas wanted to improve production, he knew this maintenance management process would not suffice.
Choosing Fiix
Longevity was a key factor in choosing software. Fiix was a newly acquired software company under the Rockwell Automation brand. Since Dunlop's plant floor equipment is mostly controlled by Rockwell Automation PLCs, the established trust in the brand made Fiix an easy sell.
In terms of software needs, Dunlop was looking for a system that could view machine history and historical work order data. Lastly, their engineers needed to be able to login and access their work from a phone or tablet from anywhere in the facility.
Day-to-day use of Fiix CMMS
The impact of switching to Fiix CMMS was pretty quick for the team. “We saw improvements within the first few months,” Michael says. For example, the use of the CMMS includes producing daily reports for plant managers who previously had to create the reports manually. “There has been a tremendous time savings,” says Michael.
Created daily, the reports generated using the analytics tool are key to tracking things like Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF), which is reported on in weekly maintenance meetings.
Other benefits of implementing Fiix CMMS included:
- Better time management: by eliminating paper and Excel and improving access to machine data, the team wasted less time finding answers and more time-solving problems.
- Enhanced decision-making: access to daily and weekly reports facilitated better decision-making.
- Improved data quality: quality of data was free from human error, aiding in more accurate scheduling and resource allocation.
Beyond maintenance benefits, Dunlop was the first non-North American Rockwell Automation account to adopt Fiix CMMS.
Fiix CMMS: A match made in heaven
Moving forward, the facility aims to continue leveraging technology to optimize maintenance operations, affirming the significant role of digital tools in industrial maintenance management.
