Digitalization in Industry: Mobility and Maintenance Management at CIN

2. IMPLEMENTATION PROCESS

The “Mobility and digitalization of maintenance processes” project took place at CIN – Corporação Industrial do Norte, S.A., a Portuguese company based in Maia, whose main activity is the manufacture and sale of paints and varnishes. It currently operates ten plants in six countries. Since 1992, it has led the domestic market and, since 1995, it has become the leader in the Iberian Peninsula. It was recently recognized as the tenth largest paint manufacturer in Europe [2].

After many years of significant progress in maintenance management, leveraged by the “ManWinWin” CMMS, the project came about naturally. With a view to continuous evolution in practice, the opportunity was identified to optimize certain procedures by adopting mobility software, especially for preventive interventions. In particular, the replacement of traditional paper work orders with mobile devices such as tablets stood out as a favorable strategy for improving the effectiveness and efficiency of maintenance operations.

This fundamental pillar established the simplification of technicians’ activities on the shop floor as the project’s main objective, with a natural positive effect on the service provided by the maintenance function. With this change in model designed to improve the productivity of the maintenance team, the following goals were also set:

• Improve the effectiveness of the preventive maintenance system;
• Reduce the incidence of corrective interventions;
• Raise the level of precision and accuracy of interventions;
• Increase the operational efficiency of the maintenance team;
• Improve the quality of intervention reports.

In the process of defining objectives and guidelines, it was identified that the project’s potential for improvement could be maximized by developing a new feature. Thus, a new feature, called 2D Augmented Reality (2D AR), was integrated into the existing mobility solution, with the aim of guiding maintenance technicians more objectively during interventions, providing them with contextual information, real-time data and collaboration tools. The implementation of this resource was intended to align the project with its central objective: to reach a more advanced level in the execution of maintenance interventions, ensuring the best possible operational efficiency.

The project consisted of two main components: IT developments and implementation sessions (consultancy and training). As part of the former, some of the resources already in the mobility application were adjusted and the new resource was incorporated; during the initial implementation phase, it was necessary to gather an extensive set of information to carry out the necessary loading onto the assets, including photographs (of the equipment and its components), manuals, technical drawings and intervention points, among other relevant elements. This stage was essential to optimize the use of mobility.

In order to fully benefit from the new 2D RA resource, it was also necessary to adapt the library of maintenance tasks (in addition to updating those that were lacking) that had been used as the basis for the various maintenance plans, making it better prepared for the mobility platform. To do this, its content was redefined, converting and unfolding the various sets of existing activities – registered on the basis of periodicity (e.g. “Annual Review”) – into individual tasks, thus making it possible to individually flag each maintenance task with the labels Done OK, Done NOK or Not Done.

In addition, this solution introduced the possibility of individualized observations, making it easier, among other advantages, to justify why a task was not carried out or, if it was, to indicate any problems identified (e.g. the compressor inlet pressure was measured, but it was found that it was not within normal parameters). The project also offered an opportunity to improve equipment registration, aligning physical existence with computerized registration, both in terms of inventory and in terms of enriching existing data.

As mentioned at the beginning, the training of technicians was a fundamental premise for the success of this project, so it was necessary to train the maintenance team in the new resources, namely to carry out interventions in a more targeted manner. After six months of using the new system, a survey was carried out among nine technicians from the maintenance team, from which the main results for this article were drawn. These reveal that:

The general satisfaction of the maintenance technicians and the reduced resistance to change with the replacement of physical work orders with a mobile solution were the first successes of the implementation. In line with the central objective of the project, the technicians evaluated the tablet as a useful tool, as it allowed them almost instant access to crucial data, in contrast to paper, which limited their consultation of the information available there.

As well as promoting an environmentally responsible attitude, the change has brought other advantages, especially for managers and other non-operational members of the department, such as considerably simplifying the process of launching, allocating, recording and closing work. Previously, once the work had been completed, the technicians would hand in paper work orders to the workshop manager, who would then enter the information into the system. Now, the reports are made directly by the technicians, eliminating this intermediate step.

Want to know how the world’s most experienced CMMS maintenance management software can help you?

Join ManWinWin Software, the world’s most experienced company in CMMS!

Choose a better way to manage your Maintenance