Clearer picture on maintenance

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provided the perfect opportunity to clean up our records; we had around 3000 suppliers on record, half of which were out of date, and several listed for machines we didn't even use anymore.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 Just eliminating outdated files has improved the efficiency of our asset management."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.