Software helps minimise downtime
November 1st 2006

The same sense of innovation that drives Charles Wells to create Wells Banana Bread Beer, also drove them to be one of the first companies to use Shire Systems' FrontLine Maintenance Management software. That was over twenty years ago and, today, Charles Wells is still using the latestgeneration of FrontLine

As the UK's largest independent, family-owned brewery, Charles Wells produces Wells Bombadier Bitter, the fastest-growing premium bitter in the UK, and Wells Eagle IPA, as well as Kirin Ichiban and Jamaica Red Stripe lagers.

They also distribute the fastest-growing bottled lager, Corona Extra, and have made Wells Banana Bread beer the fastestgrowing tipple for drinkers of non-traditional beers.

Charles Wells brews over 300,000 gallons of beer and lager every week at its plant in Bedford, and packages them into kegs, casks, bottles and cans, using FrontLine Maintenance Management at every stage of the brewing and packaging process.

With a planned 30% increase in production, Charles Wells' Engineering Administrator, Graham Walker, is overseeing the transition to 24/7 production which will effectively remove the luxury of running planned maintenance at weekends and place greater emphasis on minimising down-time.

With this in mind, Charles Wells has completed the first phase of upgrading to remote, paper-free materials management by adding FrontLine's HandiWorks and HandiParts modules to work alongside their existing modules. The new modules will eliminate paperwork by allowing engineers on the floor to communicate directly with the FrontLine system, therefore saving them time and eliminating paperwork.

Walker explains; "The core FrontLine module holds a complete list of our machinery together with planned tasks and set timescales for completion by our internal maintenance teams or external maintenance contractors. Previously, I would print off a list of planned maintenance jobs and run a management report on the rolling average of completed maintenance tasks once the engineers' feedback had been entered into the system. With the new handhelds, communication to and from the engineering teams is faster and I get almost immediate confirmation that a task is finished, together with additional comments from the engineer."

The first stage of the move towards remote asset management, involved buying twelve handheld PDAs, together with a halfday training session for the Brewhouse and Electrical teams. During the initial trial, Walker calculated that there was a measurable increase in productivity of 6%, and a 10% increase in the reporting of unplanned maintenance tasks which were identified and completed by the engineers during routine work.

By helping to log every routine and unplanned maintenance task, FrontLine builds a comprehensive service and breakdown history for each machine which helps to identify which plant is the most reliable and to target those that prove unreliable.

Charles Wells' use of the FrontLine Maintenance Management system also extends to managing their engineering stores and purchasing of spares as well as to budget control and other financial aspects of materials management. With the Stock Control, Purchasing and Financial modules linked to the core Maintenance module, stock numbers can be added to work requests and stock issues logged via PDA, whilst re-ordering can be automated to maintain critical stock limits. The Financial module collates day-to-day expenditure on labour and spares from the other modules and helps Walker to manage budget forecasts and actual spend as well as calculating depreciation on plant.

After twenty years of relying on FrontLine Maintenance Management, the next step for Charles Wells is to extend the use of the remote PDAs to other areas within the brewery. Undoubtedly, all concerned are looking forward to raising a glass of Wells Banana Bread Beer to toast the next stage in the ongoing evolution in materials management. Cheers!

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