The future of Rockwood Pigments’ maintenance operations
is looking bright. The manufacturer and processor of liquid,
powder, and granulated pigments has installed an
Idhammar Maintenance Management System (CMMS) and
is enjoying the benefits of more efficient operations

When disaster struck in 2007 and
Rockwood Pigments’ site at
Kidsgrove, Stoke-on-Trent was
flooded, destroying many important
maintenance and machinery records, its
maintenance engineers resolved to transform
the way they work, and to back up their data.

The team also used the opportunity to set
about what is often considered the ‘arduous
task’ of cleansing records and adding data to
improve its analysis of key assets:
Peter Richardson, engineering team leader,
explains: “The data input process provided the
perfect opportunity to clean up our records;
we had around 3000 suppliers on record, half
of which were out of date, and several listed
for machines we didn’t even use anymore. It
was the same with engineering spares. Just
eliminating outdated files has improved the
efficiency of our asset management.”
Paul Gray, Idhammars’ business
development manager and account manager
for Rockwood Pigments, says: “Companies
that invest a little bit of time and effort in
making sure their systems hold valid data
always enjoy greater returns on their
investment – and Rockwood Pigments is a
prime example of this. We believe it’s
important, and work with our customers to
help them through the cleansing, migrating,
and/or data loading processes.”
Rockwood Pigments soon started to enjoy
other benefits of the software, including a
clearer, more organised approach to
maintenance which allowed the scheduling and
classification of its maintenance (preventative
or breakdown, new installation or inspection,
condition monitoring, and so on), as well as
the opportunity to set up planned preventative
maintenance tasks, enabling auto inspection
and reporting on a number of critical items.

Also, process controllers are now able to take
advantage of the software’s powerful reporting
and analysis tools which allow them to cross
check data and report on the findings.

The system has proved a great success,
allowing the company to be more cost
effective and time efficient, maximising asset
performance and reducing downtime.

Rockwood Pigments has made such progress
using the software that it has recently
upgraded to the latest version. Jonathan Ellis,
IT manager comments: “When working with
Idhammar Systems, software migrations and
upgrades are smooth. It’s the way system
implementations should be – swift and
hassle free.”
The full case study is available to download:
http://www.idhammarsystems.com, or can be
picked up from Idhammar Systems’ stand at
MAINTEC (Stand C15), where the company
will be showcasing its CMMS and OEE software.

Alan France, the company’s operations
director, will be presenting a case study in the
MAINTEC learnShops on Wednesday 29th
February.