Enhanced Logistics: How ColdTrack Cooled Downtime by 70% with MaintainX

Overview

ColdTrack, formerly NutriFresh, was founded in 2014 as a turnkey cold chain logistics platform for eCommerce food and beverage brands. The company delivers logistics solutions for cold and frozen eCommerce businesses, from complex pick-and-pack operations to perishable shipping technology. ColdTrack modular services include nationwide temperature-controlled distribution centers, white-glove pick and pack services, proprietary technology built exclusively for perishable fulfillment, and enterprise-level shipping services.

Unlike traditional third-party logistic companies (3PLs), ColdTrack focuses on the unique complexities of shipping perishable goods, such as FDA-compliant fresh and frozen storage, kitting and pick arrays, and the handling of custom packaging, insulated liners, dry ice, and gel packs.

Maintenance manager Brendan Fenton has been at ColdTrack for the past six years. He oversees the facility and building maintenance and safety. As a result, he has his “hands on MaintainX every day,” organizing and planning building maintenance procedures and facility and safety concerns. John Sokolowski considers himself the safety and maintenance guy who administers maintenance, safety, quality assurance, production, projects, and training.

Challenges

Before implementing MaintainX, ColdTrack experienced at least three significant challenges:

1. Preparing for Audits Took Three Months

“Records were scattered all over the place on paper,” Brendan recalled. “And, too often, activities were not recorded or timestamped.

2. Overspending on Parts

John and Brendan managed parts using a spreadsheet on a whiteboard the size of sheet plywood. John recalled, “Our parts records were inadequate. We didn’t know where the parts were going. If somebody didn’t go in and write it down when they were supposed to, then we didn’t know because I guarantee you that the paper work order didn’t include a cycle number. So then there was no way of knowing who did it and when it happened.”

3. Wading through Paperwork

John and Brendan reported working 70+ hours weekly and being buried in paperwork. “We couldn’t handle it anymore. Things were super archaic.” They were writing out work orders on paper and hoping mechanics were writing down the correct information.

Brendan said, “Some maintenance guys would run through an entire week without doing any of their paperwork. Work just wasn’t getting finished.”

With an SQL audit approaching, Brendan and John tried to file all the paper records “under the right month, under the right week. We had to make sure everything had the right tool, procedure, and cycle number attached to it. It was so brutal—it took us three months just to do that alone.”

Solution

After the audit, ColdTrack found and implemented MaintainX. John said, “The moment the audit was over, we went paperless. We have not used another piece of paper.”

Now, with MaintainX, ColdTrack’s maintenance is 100% paperless. “Doing this,” John recalled, “was very impactful. It was a breath of fresh air from the moment we said, ‘Enough is enough. We are 100% MaintainX from here. No printing of anything. We’re completely paperless.’ I can tell you from my standpoint I’ve turned less gray since then.”

In addition, ColdTrack uses MaintainX to:

• Guarantee high pressure processing (HPP). HPP, also known as high pressure pascalization or cold pasteurization, is a non-thermal (5ºC – 20ºC) food and beverage preservation method that guarantees food safety and achieves an increased shelf life while maintaining the optimum attributes of fresh products.
• Reduce downtime. Downtime stops production entirely, and as Brendan says, “Every minute counts.”
• Manage equipment and building maintenance and safety and quality assurance.
• Meet exacting regulatory requirements from SQF, OSHA, and GMP.

To do this, ColdTrack has created multiple MaintainX organizations, each with discrete functions. With MaintainX, ColdTrack developed structured and detailed procedures with conditional filters to ensure high quality and accountability.

Standardizing and digitizing processes with MaintainX significantly improved efficiency, transparency, and trust, all contributing to reducing weekly hours and costs.

Results

With MaintainX fully implemented, John and Brendan described three ROI indicators they report to leadership:

1. 70% Reduction in Downtime

With MaintainX, ColdTrack went from 5% of total scheduled run time to 1.5%. With downtime reduced, Brendan and John could plan more effectively due to the administrative time returned by MaintainX. They also started using MaintainX’s conditional procedures and requiring mechanics to attach photos of work completed, providing them with more transparency.

These changes allow them to stay on schedule and control the work being performed. “Now we schedule everything, and MaintainX tells everybody. We don’t need to remind anyone anymore. It’s just right there on their screens.”

In addition, Brandon said, “By using meters, we can preemptively go in and say, ‘Yep,’ this check valve has hit 10,000 cycles. It’s about to blow.” Then, as soon as the shift is over, they shut the machine down, lock it out, change the valve, and put it back online. “It’s probably the best thing. All of our parts have a cycle life, and we can get down to the science of the cycle and use the meters right in front of us. It’s preemptive all the way.”

2. 70% Reduction in the Cost of Parts

Before implementing MaintainX, parts costs were consistently at around $28,000 monthly. But now, with a digital real-time inventory, parts costs never exceed $10,000 monthly. With better visibility into parts usage and stock levels, John said, "We know our limits.” With automatic alerts when stock runs low to prevent stockouts, ColdTrack can identify when ordering parts may be unnecessary and when mechanics replaced parts instead of doing repairs.

John said, “We know the life spans of our parts. With a set of seals, if it doesn’t last 5,000 cycles, we know someone’s not doing their job. We watch what we spend on these things, and MaintainX tells us if the job is being done. Meters show us a lot of this.”

“With MaintainX, I can see how the guy wasn’t rectifying the problem. He was just changing parts rather than fixing the problem,” John said. “Because we use your meters feature, we know what we have, what we’re holding on to, and how long things are lasting.”

3. More Than 40% Reduction in Administrative Work

Using MaintainX for work orders and inventory, John and Brendan eliminated paperwork and streamlined workflows, cutting their administrative time from 70 to 30-40 hours a week. John noted that this “almost totally reduced the time needed to prepare for audits.”

“Our procedures are now attached 100% to the work order. They are following the steps every single time. We tell them we want to see the timestamp that you completed the work here and here. Every step of the way, you need to take a picture because of the condition. If you did this step, show me the picture. MaintainX documents everything we need, and I can literally watch the time stamps.”

4. Positive Impact on Customer Relationships

With data recorded in MaintainX, Coldtrack can provide customers visibility of its quality standards. “It’s made our customers more trusting of us,” Brendan noted. “They can see what we’re doing.”

5. Increased Financial Visibility for Company Leadership

MaintainX helped Brandon and John advocate for and justify maintenance activities. For example, MaintainX’s Time and Cost reporting dashboard is “a great way to justify why we need maintenance to the company. We can say, ‘Here’s what I saved you.’ We’ve got the numbers right here.”

Reducing downtime was critical, especially for maintenance—every minute counts. By tracking downtime, we track costs and spending. We can show everything that we’re doing. You can never question what my guys have or have not done. It’s just right there.”

With ROI numbers at their fingertips, they can show leadership real-time statistics. “This is huge!” John said.

6. Improved Team Collaboration and Work Ethic

Some initial friction from employees not wanting to change or be accountable was always predictable. But, they overcame it through consistency, results, and “friendly competition.” Transparency encourages healthy competition between staff. “The whiteboard didn’t do us justice. I can actively show people the work from my cell phone. I don’t need to go searching through a file to find the specific work order.”

John explained that “the most significant way to justify to the company why we need maintenance. Maintenance may cost money, but here’s what’s being done in the process of us costing money. For example, We could have contractors come in and do jobs for $20,000. But my guys did it for $3,000, and MaintainX made it possible to do that."

Conclusion

Overall, ColdTrack has adapted MaintainX to its specific needs across multiple use cases. They have 15 orgs with 23 paid enterprise users on MaintainX. While the company has four facilities using MaintainX (Edison, Patterson, and Stockton in New Jersey and Dallas, Texas), it decided to segment each use case: Maintenance, Quality Assurance, Safety, Building Maintenance, Production, Shipping & Receiving, and Project Management.

“Using MaintainX has made our facility nicer and better. The work ethic has gotten better,” John noted. “We have to attribute it to MaintainX making our lives easier and letting us go and do what we need to do. I can be anywhere and pull it up on my phone. That’s perfect. We can do everything on the fly wherever we are.”

Perhaps most importantly, Brendon and John stressed that credit belongs to the partnership between MaintainX and ColdTrack, which led to continual optimization and new feature requests to expand functionality. John noted, “We use MaintainX for everything. We’re trying to get the rest of the company on board.” ColdTrack enjoys a close, communicative relationship with its Account Manager and MaintainX team. John said, “We Just want to keep the relationship going. Because if you guys get better, we get better.”

John said, “For me. I can tell you the best part: I’ve worked with other CMMS systems before, but we can tailor MaintainX to fit our needs the way we want it.” Based on its success in implementing the platform, ColdTrack highly recommends MaintainX to other facilities.

Brendan said, “There’s no limitation on what we can do. And I think that’s in the creation of mostly procedures. There’s just so much more than paper can do. And we can display it to the people above.”

“If you’re doing everything correctly, then that’s what MaintainX should display. And that’s it. And it does.”
^{—Brendan Fenton, ColdTrack}

Spotlight on the Customer

ColdTrack believes that shipping perishable goods doesn’t need to be complicated or costly. Using the latest technology to optimize time-in-transit and reduce costs and wastage, the company ensures its partners’ perishable products are delivered on time and at temperature.

Honored as one of the “100 Most Intriguing Companies” by Goldman Sachs and appearing for two consecutive years on the Inc. 5000 List, ColdTrack was most recently named the 200th fastest-growing private company in the US and earned the No. 1 position within the Cold & Frozen eCommerce Fulfillment category.