CMMS: How to make the right deployment?
Peugeot Japy Technologies (PJT), a historical plant of the Maike Automotive group, located in Valentigney (east of France) was taken over on April, 10th 2018 by Farinia Group, specialized in the material transformation (forging, iron casting and metal additive manufacturing). The plant, created in 1830 both by the Peugeot and Japy families, was originally working in the textile industry and now manufactures automotive components. It is nowadays specialized in gearboxes, mainly for the PSA and General Motors groups.
This plant, which counts 500 employees including 180 temporary workers, was placed into receivership and was struggling to convince buyers. Following the negotiations, Farinia Group, together with its various partners, was chosen to proceed to a plant’s widespread recovery strategy.
For a few months, teams have decided to opt for a new tool in order to get back on their feet and to boost their industrial maintenance: Mobility Work, a next gen computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) application and the first social network dedicated to industry professionals. Mobility Work is available in two versions, web and mobile (on iOS and Android).
This first episode of our web series is a good occasion to show how to deploy Mobility Work through the implementation of the tool in the Peugeot Japy Technologies plant!
Step 1: equip the plant and the technicians
To start deploying the Mobility Work CMMS, maintenance technicians have to be equipped with smartphones or tablets as the tool is mobile and allows them to go from one machine to the other while entering information that are necessary to the plant’s proper functioning. The technicians from Peugeot Japy Technologies are now equipped with smartphones and multiple screens, including one touch screen. They are currently being configured to be installed in the plant, in order to give the possibility to technicians to access the newsfeed very quickly.
All news related to ongoing interventions are available from Mobility Work mobile application’s newsfeed, available on iOS and Android.
Prior to anything, it is very important to decide which type of material is best suited to the use you’ll make of the tool. We advise you to use tablets if you want to enter information, read and navigate easily, or to choose smartphones if you prefer to bring them anywhere very easily: they’re smaller and fit well in your pocket, and of course they allow you to directly call people whenever needed. Last but not least: if you opt for smartphones, make sure they have chips.
To tackle the potential Wifi connection issues, also check that the output is sufficient so that all technicians can use the Mobility Work app correctly.
Step 2: connect your ERP and import your data
If you were using an ERP and that you want to save your data, you just have to find the ID of your equipment in it and to use the same ID when you create the equipment sheet in your new CMMS. Enter the information you have in the various fields and input them in the database.
As showed when deploying Mobility Work, you can easily import all your data for free in the software, including the ones contained in your former CMMS. You just have to download the import file in Excel format and to enter the following information for your equipment: name, description, cost center, links between the different equipment if necessary, associated keywords, names of the pictures that you linked to the equipment… You can find all the related needed information here.
Here, within the Peugeot Japy plant, all information about the various equipment and several maintenance plans of the structure had to be gathered to create the import file in order to save everything in Mobility Work and to start from scratch.
Step 3: integrate QR codes or NFC chips
Mobility Work allows you to link QR codes or NFC chips according to the model you have chosen so that, simply by scanning the chip, you can access the equipment in just a few seconds, the linked work order, the whole machine history, etc. You can use the app’s search bar or scan the piece of equipment on which you are intervening to display all this information and to work quicker on your daily tasks.
Peugeot Japy’s technicians have chosen to integrate QR codes. They just have to pass by the machine to get all the information they need without losing time. Concerning your plant, if you don’t know what solution to use, simply refer to the equipment’s environment. Indeed, if it is rather dusty or very dirty, you should choose NFC chips. Otherwise, QR codes will be perfectly adapted to the environment, quick to install, easy to use and cheaper.
Step 4: geolocate your equipment
Once you have named your equipment correctly following the nomenclature advised by Mobility Work, you can simply click on “geolocation of the equipment” and enter the corresponding GPS coordinates.
Mobility Work’s calendar feature allows you to schedule all your preventive and predictive maintenance tasks.
To illustrate some of the advantages of this functionality, let’s take the example of Peugeot Japy. The maintenance technicians were having great trouble managing all their tasks, meeting deadlines, delivering the goods…
Some of the Bosch and General Motors technicians therefore joined them and it was crucial, as they came from outside the plant, that they knew the exact location of the machine they had to work on from the beginning. If the plant has to call on service providers and that they don’t know anything about the structure, they also have to be able to know the place very quickly to be more efficient.
Step 5: tame the tool!
To make sure that technicians won’t feel lost using a next gen CMMS that has nothing to do with conventional and rather outdated software, they have to tame their new application progressively.
Working on a mobile device and dealing with new functionalities might be really new to some people: integrating a new CMMS is progressive. At Peugeot Japy, technicians were at first quite sceptical because they were used to work on paper, which of course resulted in major losses of information, lack of communication and many other issues. At the same time, they weren’t used to use smartphones in their workplace and even considered that it could give a very bad image, as if they weren’t serious enough. It is therefore important that the management spreads a clear and encouraging message if it wants to implement such a new tool successfully.
Moreover, don’t forget to anticipate the possible lack of computer knowledge that some employees might suffer from, even if, according to the unanimous feedback that the plants working on Mobility Work provided, these technicians get accustomed to their new tool in just a few hours.
At PJT, now that technicians master the use of the application, tasks creation, maintenance routines, equipment sheets, geolocation, uploading of documents (photos, invoices…) or using the community don’t hold any secrets for them anymore!
If users encounter any issue, they can simply go to the Help Center provided by Mobility Work or use the online support, both directly accessible in the application, so that they can get all the answers they need in a few minutes.
In a nutshell…
- Provide the team with smartphones or tablets so that technicians can know what’s happening in their plant in real time;
- Make sure you’re equipped with a good Wifi connection;
- Choose between integrating QR codes or NFC chips;
- Geolocate your equipment;
- Implement the tool progressively, explain to the technicians why it makes maintenance routines more fluid and make sure the management spreads a positive message;
- Create your first equipment sheets, maintenance routines and other tasks!
Read the second episode of this webseries: the daily deployment
