How Hudsonville Ice Cream Is Building a Predictive Maintenance Program With MaintainX

Key Results

• Machine data that’s actionable: Ignition signals flow into MaintainX so equipment issues are monitored continuously and routed into the CMMS.
• Technicians have a single source of truth: Work orders, communication, asset manuals, and alerts all live in one place, saving time and improving accountability.
• AI tools support more wrench time: MaintainX’s AI tools have reduced the team’s admin work, including cutting the time it takes to create a procedure or work order by up to 90%.
• Efficiency improvements: Technicians each save at least two hours per week on work order processes alone. Downtime has been reduced thanks to faster parts lookup and a shift from calendar-based PMs to more usage-based maintenance.

Most manufacturers are all too familiar with the high cost of downtime. Hudsonville Ice Cream is no exception; in fact, they manufacture at such a high capacity that downtime has the potential to hit their bottom line harder than most. 

The 100-year-old, Michigan-based manufacturer produces a massive amount of ice cream. So when an asset goes down, there isn’t extra slack in the schedule to make up for it later.

As Brett Pyper, Hudsonville’s maintenance planner, puts it, “Downtime is super critical because we’re booked out as far as manufacturing capacity goes. Getting to the point where we don't have unexpected downtime is extremely important on any asset that we own.”

Before MaintainX, Hudsonville had already invested in advanced technology to reduce downtime and improve efficiency, including fully automated packaging and palletizing, best-in-class robotics, and access to real-time equipment data through Ignition. And yet, like many plants, the company had a problem: the machine data they were collecting wasn’t being used consistently in their maintenance team’s day-to-day work.

When Brett joined Hudsonville, his goal was to help the team find a system that could support the company’s predictive maintenance future.

Challenges before MaintainX

Frustrating legacy CMMS

Hudsonville’s old CMMS wasn’t well adopted by the team, as it wasn’t intuitive to use. It also didn’t effectively support real-time work on the floor, which made it hard for technicians to build consistent habits around documentation. 

Machine data rarely turned into maintenance work

The company invested in Ignition to capture machine signals, but only a handful of people could log in and monitor what was happening. To make that data useful, technicians needed training, a laptop on the floor, and the time to watch dashboards.

“There wasn't a way to use the data unless you had somebody monitoring the system,” Brett explains. 

As a result, valuable data sat untouched most of the time. Machine signals existed, but they lived outside of the places where technicians planned and executed work. 

Why MaintainX

One of Brett’s main requirements for a new CMMS was that it helped the team shift toward usage-based and predictive maintenance. The goal was efficiency: fewer low-value preventive maintenance tasks and more meaningful inspections.

“Instead of doing a PM just because it's due on a calendar, you should be doing a PM because the equipment actually needs it,” Brett explains. “You should be finding and flagging things in your PMs. If you're not finding anything, then you could be utilizing your time better.”

The team outlined several criteria for the CMMS search. They wanted a system that:

• Brought in machine data from Ignition
• Supported sensor monitoring
• Was easy for technicians to use on the floor in real time
• Stored asset manuals and documentation

“MaintainX filled all of those boxes and more,” Brett says.

Results

A single source of truth

“MaintainX is a single point of truth for our maintenance techs,” says Brett. “They're messaging in that system. They're commenting on work orders in that system. There are alerts for Ignition coming into that system. The manuals are on the assets in that system. They don't need to use four different platforms to be able to do their jobs.”

With everything centralized, the team gets:

• More consistent documentation and reporting
• Clearer accountability (work is tracked and discussed in one place)
• Faster decision-making because context is attached to each asset

Machine data becomes maintenance work

Hudsonville made MaintainX the hub where maintenance happens and where machine data drives work orders.

They no longer rely on human monitoring to translate machine signals into jobs. Now, MaintainX’s Ignition connector brings signals into the CMMS, where technicians already spend their time.

“MaintainX is watching all the time because it's an automated tool,” Brett says. “You don't have to worry about a human watching over things, or getting an email alert and then having to go to your inbox to find it.”

Hudsonville has also taken advantage of the Smart Tag Mapping feature, which automatically maps Ignition tags to MaintainX assets. This dramatically cuts the manual effort required to configure and scale their connector, which means their raw machine data is turning into PM schedules more quickly. 

“You can create 20 PMs in an hour,” Brett explains. “It saves me from ever having to manually create that work order again, because MaintainX and Ignition are looking for that information to come through from the piece of equipment. They're going to kick the work order out whenever they need to. So it's an investment in your future, giving you time to do other things.”

AI tools lead to more wrench time 

Hudsonville uses MaintainX’s AI solutions to cut down on administrative work and make it easier for technicians to keep things moving.

“Technicians want to turn wrenches, and this gives them time to turn more wrenches. Instead of spending an hour reading a manual, they punch some questions into the MaintainX AI tool, and it spits out answers,” Brett says. “And you can cut down how long it takes to create a procedure or a work order by up to 90%.”

Mobile-first means faster work

Through the new work order process alone, Brett estimates that each of his technicians saves two hours per week. “They don't need to go back, sit at a desktop, and go through a clunky system to get a work order created. They can pull their phone out and make a work order in 45 seconds while they’re at the machine.” 

Another big efficiency win for the team was inventory visibility. Technicians can now find parts without wasting time digging through storage.

“Technicians are able to hop on their phone and look up what's in our inventory, and then go upstairs and be able to find things right away. That’s a super big game changer for us.”

Looking ahead

Brett is excited to continue Hudsonville’s predictive maintenance journey with MaintainX. “We’ve gone through a lot of adjustments, from adding Ignition to vibration sensors. Even more things are yet to come. We're really trying to dial in and have a fully predictive maintenance program here.”

The ultimate goal of this predictive approach is a future without breakdowns. “MaintainX is a big part of getting us to zero unexpected downtime.”

When it comes to getting started with Industry 4.0 projects like this, Brett’s advice to other teams is to implement a system technicians will actually use, then build from there.

“The first thing I would say would be to switch to MaintainX for your CMMS software. Once you get that, you can start digitizing everything. Get the manuals in there. Get your assets in order. You start to build data with all the work orders you're associating with those assets. From there, you can pick whichever direction you want to go: do you want to go into the monitoring side? Do you want to go into your procedures and PMs and develop those further?”

He also encourages leaders to reflect on how far they’ve come. “I get to stand in front of my technicians and say, remember six months ago, when we were writing this stuff out on paper? And we had to print all the work orders out? Things have changed a lot, and it’s amazing how fast it all can happen.”