Successes
Our clients are testimony to the value Benchmate brings to their maintenance operations:
AFL Telecommunications, a Fujikura business
In 2005, AFL Telecommunications – a Fujikura business – was looking for a maintenance solution to manage scheduled preventive maintenance (PM) work.
“We needed a system for scheduled maintenance for all plant systems,” states Brad Roberts, Facility Engineering Manager. “Benchmate was our choice because it was a low cost solution and cost-effective to meet the needs of our 15 maintenance professionals responsible for our large plant.”
Roberts continues by expressing how simple and easy to use Benchmate is as a system to communicate with maintenance. With the trouble call functionality, any one within the plant can instantly notify maintenance of any identified issues that need attention.
“The PM functionality was a top priority for us”, continues Roberts. “We have fully embraced Benchmate and will soon expand our use of the system. Our team and company are well-pleased with the results we’ve achieved from having Benchmate in place in a short period of time.”
American Gypsum – Eagle Plant
Located between Denver and Grand Junction, Colorado, American Gypsum – Eagle Plant - operates around the clock to produce more than 113 miles of wallboard each day. Because American Gypsum recognized how important it was to keep their wallboard operation running reliably and smoothly, they set out to find a maintenance management software system that would improve how their maintenance department tracked equipment history.
It was the maintenance department that embarked on finding the right tool to replace their manual maintenance process that included log books full of hand-written equipment records. The result of the search by the team was the selection of Benchmate. Chosen for its simplicity and intuitive interface, Benchmate was immediately implemented and made available for use by both maintenance and production personnel with little training required.
On the production side, operations personnel began to utilize the trouble call function which is accessible to all crew foremen on the plant floor. Trouble calls are issues that may arise at any time and require the attention of the maintenance department. Rather than having to track down a mechanic or electrician, production personnel simply enter information pertaining to the problem area directly into Benchmate.
Maintenance Superintendent Bill Baxter attests that Benchmate has enhanced the way his team performs maintenance.
“We use Benchmate extensively to schedule our planned maintenance – it is the ‘heart’ of our maintenance management activities,” states Baxter.
Filtrona Extrusion, Inc. – part of Filtrona, PLC located in London, England – Yakima, Washington Plant
When Filtrona Extrusion maintenance supervisor Dave Gish set out to find a maintenance system for his crew, he was challenged well beyond the number of systems available on the market. Gish had a team that included many who had very little PC experience. After reviewing several systems with maintenance lead Alonzo Cornella, the two knew right away they had an answer after reviewing a demonstration of Benchmate. “The system was simple to understand and the screens were extremely easy to navigate,” states Gish. “I knew right away Benchmate was exactly what we needed.” Cornella adds, “The implementation was quick as we were able to easily import all of our data into the system. In only our second year of using the system, we have reduced downtime by 50%.”
This custom plastics extrusion plant quickly saw the value of Benchmate and currently uses the system for monthly preventive maintenance (PM’s), tracking downtime and reporting on completed jobs which illustrates costs, histories and trends.
“We track more than 150 pieces of production equipment in Benchmate,” continues Gish. “From a user’s standpoint, the system is easy to understand and provides us with the intelligence to see downtime trends and improve our planned maintenance. Benchmate is a winner for Filtrona Extrusion.”
Freightcar America
Gene Wyss, Plant Manager with Freightcar America – the largest North American manufacturer of aluminum railroad freight cars used to haul coal – has been an advocate of Benchmate for many years having used the system in several different manufacturing environments.
“Benchmate is an excellent system for preventive maintenance (PM) management and spare parts tracking,” states Wyss. “The system is easy to work with and has an outstanding search capability. The equipment database houses all assets for easy tracking and multiple sort options. All PM information is straight-forward and simple to follow without any complexities. With Benchmate’s reporting capability, you can easily see what maintenance has been performed on plant assets including use of spares and important cost information. I’ve used the system for years and will continue to rely on Benchmate for my maintenance management needs.”
Pinal Creek Group
Site Manager John Trimble has been around Pinal Creek Group since project start-up and for the past seven years has been responsible for operations and maintenance services with his team from Jacobs Field Services. Before the treatment facility even began operations in the late 1990’s, Trimble knew they needed a maintenance system to manage their work processes, provide complete histories on all equipment and full documentation of work performed.
The team uses Benchmate for trouble calls, work orders, inventory control and preventive maintenance. Reports are generated to review completed jobs each month including planned versus scheduled preventive maintenance, cause coding and procedural documentation.
“Benchmate has been a great tool for us,” Trimble continues. “Our PM functions with very little time spent on scheduling which improves our efficiencies. The system is easy to navigate and extremely user-friendly. We continue to be pleased with the reliability of the system and the great response we receive from Benchmate’s customer care group.”
St. Charles Medical Center
Consistently noted as one of the nation’s “top 100 hospitals,” St. Charles Medical Center serves the medical needs of patients throughout central and eastern Oregon. Two locations boast of over 1,000,000 square feet of facility space and 250 patient beds with nearly 20 buildings across the medical campuses. Keeping two medical center campuses in compliance with the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) is no easy task – and was made more difficult for St. Charles Medical Center because of outdated processes.
To add to the compliance frenzy, St. Charles Medical Center embarked on a process to improve organizational and patient care quality. In late 1999, the hospital became one of only a few ISO 9000 compliant Healthcare organizations in the nation. To properly adhere to compliance issues, preventive maintenance (PM) measures and actual work performed had to be documented. As a result, St. Charles Medical Center was motivated to implement Benchmate which now serves as the hub for all facility operations, testing, and maintenance.
More than 28 users access Benchmate routinely to respond to maintenance needs, perform scheduled work and close out work orders on completed jobs. The Benchmate system issues an average of 1,200 – 1,400 work orders each month. All maintenance work that is planned, emergency related or in compliance with the environment-of-care standards is captured and recorded within Benchmate.
This level of detail enables St. Charles Medical Center to generate specific reports to determine what type of work was performed, when it was done and the cost. Staff can generate reports directly from Benchmate for work order backlog, PM completion and labor cost tracking at any time to gauge how well St. Charles Medical Center is performing maintenance.
“Benchmate is a very user friendly system and has become the essential tool for our maintenance operations,” says Ron Neet, director of facilities services. “We rely heavily on the system for reporting and documentation used for regulatory compliance. It’s easy to pull information from the system to demonstrate compliance as required.”
Cerrowire
As a leading manufacturer of copper electrical building wire and cable, Cerrowire has built a solid reputation of delivering what they promise. The company supplies building wire for commercial and industrial buildings and residential wire for interior electrical wiring in homes, apartments and manufactured housing.
Nearly 250 employees ensure that quality wire and cable products are consistently produced at the company’s Hartsville, Alabama headquarters and 250,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. With a multi-craft maintenance department covering three production shifts, Cerrowire needed a maintenance system to capture work history, track spares inventory and manage preventive maintenance (PM).
Cerrowire reviewed several systems – and each offered a range of functionality and available at varying price points. The evaluation process culminated with the selection of Benchmate’s maintenance management system.
PM activity is pre-planned and scheduled in Benchmate to include all procedures related to the PM. Work order reports are available for management to review and analyze scheduled, routine, emergency or PM work performed.
Cerrowire uses Benchmate to track nearly 10,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) for inventory management and bar code scanners to issue parts against equipment and track costs. Locating the parts needed for maintenance jobs is an easy process. Mechanics quickly find parts by searching the specific part number, by entering a brief description of the equipment or even by spare parts vendor. Cerrowire’s tool room manager uses Benchmate data to perform cycle counts for inventory control.
“Benchmate gives us exactly what we need to be accountable as a maintenance department,” says Jesse Cain, engineering manager. “With it, we know what work has been scheduled, when it was actually performed, completion details and reporting so that we can track our maintenance performance. Benchmate is simple – it works and gets the job done. We love it.”
DTE Biomass Energy
Since 1988, DTE Biomass Energy has been doing their part to help limit greenhouse gas emissions by operating landfill gas recovery systems that capture the gas and put it to productive use. This process involves asset-intensive equipment that must be properly maintained in order to keep DTE’s equipment available for their 24/7 operations.
To ensure their equipment assets – some valued in excess of $1.5 million per piece – and associated components are maintained on a routine basis, DTE schedules and manages all maintenance activity in a maintenance software system called Benchmate. All PM’s across four locations are scheduled and managed using Benchmate. Schedules and completed work histories are easily reviewed at any time to know the exact status of maintenance activity.
“Prior to using the Benchmate system, our maintenance tracking and management was handled manually,” says James Pena, director of pipeline and quality products at DTE Biomass Energy. “Having Benchmate helps us focus on jobs that must be done. Because they’re scheduled in the system, we cannot ignore them – and that provides accountability that we need to be better organized and more efficient.”
Benchmate also effectively addresses work performed by operators such as greasing and oiling, as well as any work conducted by outside contractors. This often includes work tasks that are executed during shutdowns and scheduled overhaul maintenance.
Routine reporting provides facility managers and other management with key data related to all maintenance work – whether scheduled, in process or completed. Reports are often used to review materials used for jobs, who performed the work and when the work was done.