“We are using Mobility Work CMMS as an internal project management tool”
Hervé Vourron is a production manager at Sarplast, a company specialized in technical thermoplastic injection in the East of France. At the head of two maintenance services (machining and machines), of the injection workshop, assembly shop and methods service, he witnessed the early development of the app and is now a convinced client, that is why he agreed to share his experience regarding the evolution of the product.
What convinced you to test Mobility Work?
Hervé Vourron: I knew Mobility Work through an email sent by our CEO, Mr. Guindon. Back then, maintenance services were managed the old way, with failure reporting in hard copy. When I arrived in April 2016, I implemented an Excel file to manage these services, instead of an actual CMMS software, which was too expensive in my opinion for our SMB. Our Excel document was generally satisfying, but would not meet all my expectations. Your product came at the right moment: I tested it, and I was immediately convinced.
I was surprised by the general presentation of the app inspired by e-commerce website, its user-friendliness, and intuitiveness, as well as its powerful and easy-to-use search bar. It immediately appeared to be very easy to implement compared to other solutions I had the opportunity to test in the past: the purchasing decision was very fast. The investment cost was key because this solution is way more affordable compared to other classic CMMS software. That is how we started using our first CMMS, Mobility Work. Otherwise, we still would not have any.
Is Mobility Work properly implemented in your company?
Implementation started during summer 2017, and this mission was entrusted to a computer science student for two months. He was in charge of taking pictures of all the equipment, setting machines and spare parts, and did 90% of the work during this time although he did not know the company at all.
Despite some difficulties at the beginning, our lack of experience on the tool and some minor bugs, the app is very effective now, and we are registering everything we can.
As a matter of fact, all implemented CMMS software do not necessarily work as well and as quickly. Over my industrial career, I experienced several CMMS software, which were very expensive and hard to implement, and which, after several years, wouldn’t work anymore due to a lack of additional resources. Mobility Work’s approach is completely different, that is why it is interesting.
On a side note, some of our maintenance technicians were not used to work with computing tools. I was a bit worried about this technological gap, however, they quickly understood the interest of transitioning from hard copy to 4.0. They quickly adapted to it. On a daily basis, we are using tablets, smartphones, and desktops. We also added a few hotspots in the plant to get a better WiFi, and it is working pretty well now.
How does Mobility Work benefit your work?
Implementing the solution was very easy, and so is the daily tasks management. The cost of the solution is key for us, and so is the search engine: by typing the name of the machine, we can get all the interventions as well as the history.
The application has improved a lot since the beginning: I was already in touch with Mobility Work in early 2017, and between this first contact and the implementation in our factory, the application had already evolved a lot.
Among the main benefits of the app, I would mention quick information feedbacks, which were formerly managed on hard copy. Back then, we used to have a full-time employee assigned to retranscription intervention orders, and to archiving. We assigned her to a position with a higher added value. Now all failure reports are managed by technicians, which represents a valuable gain regarding our workforce. I would also mention the fact that we improved our reactivity: we are now able to know which equipment has failed, when, why, how, and we can add documents to it (videos, plans, sketches, etc.). Above all, we can create real links between failure requests and interventions, that we did not have in the past.
Which feature do you use the most, that you cannot do without?
As a production and maintenance manager, Mobility Work’s most interesting features are failure reports and interventions. This CMMS is particularly interesting to me, since it allows me to monitor the work of the team, and how the maintenance and the production department both react: when was a piece of equipment stopped, who worked on it, do we have to order a new part, how to analyze intervention times, etc.
Mobility Work application’s Big Data tool helps you make better decisions with customizable indicators.
Furthermore, we are very interested in MTBF and MTTR indicators, that we would like to implement in the near future: which mold or equipment is the most expensive, which machine has the most breakdowns, how to manage our preventive maintenance, etc.
The main advantages of the app are, according to us, failure reports, activities and tasks.
What are your future plans about Mobility Work CMMS?
First, we are interested in stock management, especially for our spare parts, which were formerly managed on Excel files, without any link between machines and spare parts. We are now able to create connections between a machine and a spare part, to manage stock costs, minimum stocks, the number of parts in stock …
The new feature we are the most interested in is maintenance indicators, MTBF and MTTR. We did not have them until now, and we are now starting to gather more and more reliable data, which are worked out automatically!
We are also starting to manage internal technical projects, particularly for the methods team: automation, process optimization, continuous improvement, etc.
That is why we now use Mobility Work as a project management tool: instead of creating a piece of equipment, we create a project, and the methods team feeds it with their actions, using the “tasks” and “activities”. It allows us to follow the evolution, costs, and achievements on a daily or monthly basis. This avoids us to manage an Excel file which would take a lot of time. We have everything encompassed in one system.
Which feature is not available yet, would you like to see ?
We have been talking about this for quite a while with the Mobility Work team: maintenance plans which, although they have quite evolved since the beginning, are still missing two major aspects.
Access all documents (photos, videos, etc.) and checklists from the task sheet in your Mobility Work application.
First, we would like to be able to integrate ranges of maintenance operations or checklists. When creating a preventive maintenance plan, we have a list of punctual operations for maintenance technicians. I would like to include pre-filled or customizable checklists and to have to possibility to validate or not all the scheduled operations and to reschedule all the remaining activities if needed.
Then, I would like to be able to create preventive maintenance calendars from hour meters, or from a number of cycles. For example, for our molds, maintenance plans would no longer depend on the time factor (frequency), but on a number of manufactured pieces or cycles.
Did you encounter proper service support?
Until now yes. The Mobility Work team has known how to manage our intervention requests, and your company has developed well since our first contact. I simply hope that the team will be big enough in the future to answer of the client’s requests as quick in the same time frame.
Thanks to Mr. Vourron for delivering his honest testimony: user feedbacks are at the heart of our approach, and are helping us improve our product on a daily basis.
