SAUBER Improved Uptime and Traceability Across 73 Operations With MaintainX

SAUBER Sustainable Treatment Solutions runs water treatment plants and industrial processes for clients across Colombia, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. The company’s competitive edge is reliability, so maintenance is a critical function.

Before finding a CMMS, though, the way SAUBER managed maintenance was working against their reliability goals. Routines lived in spreadsheets, and reports were stitched together manually. And because every country ran things a little differently, it was difficult to get an accurate view of each operation’s performance.

SAUBER found MaintainX while exploring digital tools to resolve these issues, and quickly saw how it could take their operations to the next level. 

“MaintainX meant a structural transformation,” says Michael Restrepo, Maintenance Coordinator and LATAM Regional Standards Leader. “We left behind manual and fragmented processes based on Excel and forms, which required up to four people just to collect information.”

Challenges

Inefficient manual processes

Spreadsheets and manual systems meant SAUBER struggled with standardization and traceability. Performance indicators sat in Looker Studio, but they arrived fragmented and delayed, which left the team reacting to problems after the window to act had closed.

Time- and bandwidth-consuming data collection

The manual effort required to gather data for reports meant pulling up to four employees off other work. Migrating to macros and Google Forms created a new problem, as the files overloaded devices and infrastructure without making the data any easier to use.

No shared standard across countries

SAUBER couldn't compare performance or roll improvements out consistently across sites in different countries.

Why MaintainX

Scalability from day one

MaintainX automated data capture and standardized processes across every site, making it realistic for SAUBER to scale reliability internationally.

One place for performance data

In MaintainX, metrics like MTBF, MTTR, and availability live in a single dashboard, giving the team an auditable source of truth to analyze.

Every work order, inspection, and routine also carries its own real-time record, ending the need to manage files outside the system.

Easy adoption

The interface was intuitive enough that teams picked it up quickly, which kept maintenance and operations aligned.

For Santiago Cuartas, Maintenance Planner, the platform "transformed our operational culture from traditional to a predictive and structured model."

Results

18% less unplanned downtime

For SAUBER’s clients in food, pharmaceutical, chemical, and environmental sectors, uptime and safety are more than nice-to-haves. MaintainX helps the team deliver in those areas by empowering them to record every intervention and track failures precisely on critical equipment. QR codes make it easy to spin up work orders on the spot. 

In Cuartas’ words, SAUBER can now “keep plants at 100% and reach milestones of more than two years without unscheduled downtime, ensuring profitability and regulatory compliance for our clients.”

By standardizing preventive routines and digitizing work orders, SAUBER cut unplanned downtime by 18%.

25% more traceability

Performance indicators are visible in real time across all three countries SAUBER operates in, which has increased operational traceability by 25%. When something changes on the floor, leadership can see it immediately.

Faster responses and higher-quality work

Implementing MaintainX has reshaped how SAUBER supervisors run plants. “We went from validating paper reports to coordinating and tracking work orders in real-time directly from the team's mobile devices,” says John Buitrago, a maintenance supervisor in Columbia. 

The result, he says, has been “a drastic reduction in response times to failures and total visibility over technician performance. Now we not only react faster, but we ensure that every preventive maintenance job is executed with the highest standards of quality and safety.”

Better-informed decisions

The team can make data-driven resource decisions thanks to clear, consolidated regional metrics. 

“We managed to reduce unscheduled downtime, optimize resource use, and standardize regional metrics like MTBF and MTTR on a single dashboard,” Restrepo says. 

The automated system saves the team significant time, generating reports in seconds. It also cleared out the IT overload, since heavy evidence files no longer saturate devices.

Looking ahead

Now that they’ve built the foundation with MaintainX, SAUBER plans to replicate its digitized model across new operations in Latin America.

Their next steps include deeper integration between MaintainX and ERP, SCADA, and BI systems, and continued movement toward a predictive maintenance culture, using historical data and IoT to anticipate failures before they happen.

“Today, maintenance at SAUBER is a strategic engine of operational reliability,” Restrepo says. “It strengthens our competitiveness and positions us as a benchmark in digital transformation in LATAM.”