A family-owned food manufacturer ran two production lines from one plant, with a maintenance function that was reactive. Service history lived with the contractor who performed the work and in a folder of paper dockets. Breakdowns were handled well and fast, but the plant’s older line had developed a pattern of stopping on Fridays that nobody had the records to explain.
The difficulty
The registers were the usual two lists that disagree: an insurance schedule maintained by the broker and a fixed-asset register maintained by the accountants, neither of which contained what the maintenance team actually needed — service history per machine, in minutes of downtime rather than dollars of value. Downtime was felt keenly and recorded nowhere. And the plant ran five and a half days a week, so every workshop visit had to be arranged around production rather than the other way round.
Project snapshot
- SectorFood Manufacturing
- Modules deployedInsight Assets, Insight Reports, Insight Alerts add-on
- Duration8 weeks, phased around two planned shutdowns
- Written up withClient permission; identifying detail removed
Numbers quoted in this study were measured by the client before and after the change — they are not our estimates. Where a figure could not be measured cleanly, it has been left out rather than rounded flatteringly.
What we changed
We loaded the insurance schedule as the starting list — the more disciplined of the two — and ran a scanning stocktake over two planned shutdowns, labelling every asset and capturing service history from the contractors’ docket folders where it existed. Insight Assets then carried maintenance schedules per machine, set by hours run rather than calendar dates for the equipment where that mattered. Downtime moved into the same record: every stoppage logged at the machine with its cause, which fed an Insight Reports pack for the weekly production meeting. Insight Alerts now warn the maintenance manager when a machine passes its service threshold.
The results
- Preventive maintenance running to schedule on both lines, from a standing start.
- Downtime recorded per machine — the Friday pattern on the older line was identified and traced to a specific component.
- Service history held with the asset rather than with whichever contractor performed the work.
- Register and insurance schedule reconciled; the renewal is now an export rather than a project.
Downtime was recorded per machine with a cause code; the Friday pattern was visible in six weeks of data.
If your organisation looks like this one
For maintenance, measure before improving: log downtime per machine with a cause code for a fortnight. Schedule maintenance by hours run where the workload varies. Hold service history with the asset, not with the contractor.
To see how a project like this would run against your own calendar and numbers, ask us for a written quote — Maintenance projects are quoted around your shutdown calendar.