Site: A tablet and capsule manufacture and packaging site in southern England with maintenance teams totalling approximately 35 technicians and craftspeople. 

When: 2000 

Background: The site was operating maintenance control and recording on a small locally purchased CMMS. Whilst largely successful this did not comply with corporate standards nor was capable of being interfaced with corporate HR, Accounting and Procurement systems. The decision was taken that this site should transfer to the common corporate CMMS system.

Some existing practices were superior to that used corporately. Two examples were:

·         A thorough library of maintenance checklist documents, numbering several hundred, which were automatically printed with the parent work order thus feeding the craftsperson with the exact instruction he required and a vehicle for recording his actions and findings.

·         Approximately 10 years historical work order records.

Use of sophisticated word documents were not yet practised in the corporate system at that time and no other site’s conversion had included existing history.

Solution: I insisted that these features were critical to the success of the upgrade and must be included. 

Action: Whilst the new corporate wide CMMS was largely validated centrally the transfer of data specific to this new site roll-out was unique and a validation method had to be developed. I created a method, steered it through a tough QA review process and finally implemented it successfully. 

Result: The site went live with the corporate CMMS but retaining its best data and processes meeting the project deadline. These features became best practice benchmarks for other sites in the corporation.