“Now, they concentrate on preventing downtime rather than reacting to it. We have the data we need to prioritize our work intelligently and arrive at solutions faster. Furthermore, the predictive-maintenance project promises further improvements in the future,” said Guðmundur Ingi Einarsson, Technical Manager at Nói Síríus.
- Production-line systems were not monitored, and no data was collected from them.
- Because of this, there was no way to predict performance degradation or failure events.
- Maintenance staff spent much of their time reacting to urgent call outs.
- The company was unable to plan cost-effective maintenance schedules
- Nói Síríus implemented Fiix® CMMS software on its entire production line.
- Using the solution, it gathered data on machine usage and performance.
- This allowed it to move to preventative rather than reactive maintenance.
- Maintenance and operational staff switched to prioritizing the job queue collaboratively.
- Engineers spent more time optimizing performance than reacting to faults.
- Fewer faults and intelligent job management meant fewer unplanned call outs.
- The company is now networking all its machines, with Rockwell Automation.
Challenge
Nói Síríus is Iceland’s leading chocolatier and confectioner. It is also a much-loved household name in the Nordic nation, producing many of the country’s favorite confectionary brands. It makes 2,000 tons of sweets and chocolates every year.
To meet Iceland’s demand for sweet treats, and hit its business goals, the company needed its production lines to run flawlessly, around the clock. But its maintenance staff still monitored its machines manually. This made it difficult to collect reliable data on performance.
Because of this, the maintenance team often had little warning before a machine suffered performance issues or underwent unplanned downtime. Team members spent much of their time reacting to performance and downtime issues, rather than preventing them.
This had several undesirable outcomes. Machine downtime sometimes resulted in production slowdowns, which impacted both the company and its customers. Engineers found themselves distracted from the job of preventative maintenance by the need to deal with unplanned and urgent tasks. And the lack of data complicated both the diagnosis of flaws and the accurate planning of future maintenance schedules.
To help the company meet its goals for business growth, the maintenance team at Nói Síríus needed a way to continuously gather performance data from its machines and then use that data to move from a reactive to a preventative model of maintenance that would make better use of its engineers’ time and improve production-line performance.
Solution
The Nói Síríus maintenance team chose Fiix® CMMS software, from Rockwell Automation. In November 2023, working closely with engineers and consultants from Rockwell, the team installed the computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) on all the company’s crucial production-line machines.
Using the cloud-based Fiix CMMS software, the maintenance team was able to instantly move to continuous data collection on its production-line systems. The team moved from in-person maintenance requests, often via phone call, to automated management of work-orders and service tickets.
With the platform’s asset-management tools, engineers could instantly view, analyze and action real-time and historical performance and other data from their key production-line machines. Through the Fiix graphical user interface (GUI), the company was able to see all of the data for each machine in one place but could also filter the view by variable to quickly home in on the key performance metrics for any specific issue, system or project goal.
Result
After adopting Fiix CMMS software, the Nói Síríus maintenance team quickly consolidated its entire job queue in the new platform. This allowed maintenance and operational staff to collaborate on queue management and job prioritization.
Soon, the team reduced the backlog of tickets. Using this freedom, and the data Fiix made available, Nói Síríus improved operational performance and reduced downtime, and it was also able to move from a reactive to a preventative maintenance model.
The effect of these changes on production efficiency, staff performance and employee experience were so marked, that within just six months of the initial deployment, Rockwell Automation and Nói Síríus were working together to network the entire production facility.
When this is complete, the chocolatier will move to a data-driven, predictive model of maintenance, helping it to further maximize uptime, cut costs and improve productivity.
”Since adopting Fiix, our maintenance staff are much happier"
Published September 19, 2024
