The Power of Benchmate
Right in the Palm of Your Hands

Unplanned or emergency maintenance requests are recorded by scanning the equipment bar code which also captures the start date and time. After entering a brief description of the request or problem, labor, parts used and comments are captured as for planned jobs. When maintenance data from the PDA is downloaded to Benchmate, it is posted to the Service Log, the associated Work Order or Trouble Call is closed and PMs rescheduled. Unplanned or emergency jobs are designated as unplanned. Recent Service Log activity can be displayed with ‘one-click’ allowing supervisors to review and ‘sign-off’ each job. The PDA Module utilizes the Janam XM66 Mobile Computer with Benchmate software performing the data capture and bar code scanning functions. Benchmate CMMS controls communication with Janam device to capture maintenance activities from the PDA and to load jobs (Benchmate Work Tickets) into the PDA.
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Sample PDA Screens

Southern States Cooperative Grows with Benchmate’s PDA Module and Multi-Site CMMS.

Southern States Cooperative (SSC) is one of the nation's largest farmer-owned cooperatives and since its inception; the co-op has led research efforts in order to make the business of farming pay better. Southern States has been at the forefront of agricultural advances throughout its 80 years in business and today encompasses some 1,200 retail locations in 23 states. Southern States Cooperative is owned by more than 300,000 farmers, the cooperative purchases, manufactures or processes feed, seed, fertilizer, farm supplies and fuel.

Serving an industry where maximum yield, requires maximum efficiencies, SSC invested in Benchmate’s, easy-to-use, CMMS in 2004. Adding the PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) Module in 2009, enabled SSC to achieve more with Benchmate. Capturing maintenance activities and equipment condition ‘on the floor’ as the work is performed, ensures accuracy, timeliness and completeness throughout the maintenance management process. “We quickly realized most efficiencies in our labor. We have much less downtime than there used to be, so that means less unplanned weekends, and less headaches,” states Clint Westergard, Plant Engineer – Southern States Cooperative.

Since deploying Benchmate’s Multi-Site CMMS at nine facilities, SCS has streamlined processes and empowers its maintenance team with real-time data. “We now have metrics to determine how efficient our programs are, have standardized our preventive maintenance and best practices across our facilities. The database allows us to have electronic copies of all work completed; the scheduling mechanism is a lot better than paper copies, and the PDA’s are helping ensure the work is done at the machine, and our mechanics record more of the small jobs that are done on-the-fly, (which is very useful for RCA (Root Cause Analysis; The process of problem solving and eliminating root causes and problem recurrence within the maintenance management process); and cost justification on capital expenditures), allowing us to be almost paperless. We now track all the work that is done, as well as, run reports and queries to determine where we are spending our time and money, versus where we should be,” continues Westergard.