How Allwest Engineering (AEL) Reduced Downtime and Increased Equipment Reliability Across 20+ Plants with MaintainX

Top Takeaways

• Streamlined preventive maintenance across 20+ plants in less than a year
• Increased equipment reliability within months, with regional managers reporting “dramatic improvements”
• Created new revenue streams by embedding MaintainX into turnkey plant installations across New Zealand

Matt Rack-Wallis is no stranger to maintenance software.

With over a decade of experience in industrial engineering, he’s seen just about everything a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) can offer a maintenance team. He’s also seen how frustrating many systems can be.

“I’ve used a lot of programs that were just old-school, clunky, and built on 20-year-old technology,” says Matt. “They did the job, but they were not very nice to work with.”

Matt ran into this same obstacle when he joined Allwest Engineering (AEL) as general manager almost three years ago. As New Zealand’s largest provider of maintenance services to concrete manufacturers, AEL needed to swap spreadsheets for software. But Matt struggled to find a powerful, easy-to-use system.

“I was working weekends and working late trying to make one of these systems work for us, and it just wasn’t,” says Matt.

“I was working on this software at 7 p.m. on a Friday instead of being at home relaxing, and I just thought, there's got to be another way.”

Not long after starting the search for new maintenance software, the AEL team found MaintainX. The fit was immediately obvious.

“As soon as I saw MaintainX, I said to myself, ‘Well, that’s the perfect one for us.’”

Challenges before MaintainX

Daily breakdowns and high downtime costs

Both Matt and AEL’s managing director Kieran Conroy acknowledge that the concrete manufacturing industry has been slow to adopt new technology, which has made downtime the norm.

“We were doing so much firefighting for customers,” says Kieran. “It was always breakdowns, breakdowns, breakdowns. It was endless.”

Downtime is costly for any manufacturer, but it was especially crushing for AEL’s customers.

“A lot of our clients would have to increase their production considerably just to pay for the concrete they lost to breakdowns,” says Matt. “It was really hurting them.”

No way to plan, track, and report on maintenance

AEL and many of their clients were using spreadsheets or self-built systems to plan and track maintenance. Not only were these systems not designed for complex industrial operations, they were also poorly maintained. This meant a lot of work and data fell through the cracks.

“Our clients rarely have any repair or machine history,” says Matt. “If anything, there’s an Excel spreadsheet that's printed off and given to someone to tick off a few things. That piece of paper usually gets put at the bottom of a drawer and forgotten about.”

With almost no visibility into asset or maintenance records, there was no way to schedule preventive maintenance and no information to help companies reduce costs.

A lack of time and resources to improve maintenance

Limited resources was one of the biggest obstacles stopping AEL customers from improving their maintenance operations.

“When our customers looked at maintenance, it was too hard to actually put a preventive plan and system together while dealing with the day to day,” says Kieran.

But AEL saw an opportunity to bring stability to not just a group of manufacturers, but an entire industry.

“The main way to differentiate yourself in concrete manufacturing right now is reliability,” says Kieran. 

“The only way to get the reliability is by doing the maintenance. That's where we saw an opportunity to benefit the customer. We just wanted to make maintenance easy for them.”

Why MaintainX

A user experience so good that even tech-adverse technicians love it

AEL needed maintenance software they could easily roll out across different sites and companies, where it would be adopted by tech savvy and tech averse employees alike.

“What sold me on MaintainX was how good it looked,” explains Matt. “Its UI and UX are top tier.”

Kieran knew that AEL needed to deliver software that adapted to the processes clients already used.

“When it came to onboarding with MaintainX, everyone took to it like a duck to water,” says Kieran. “It just shows how user-friendly the platform is. Ease of use is something MaintainX nails.”

Easy-to-build, enterprise-grade asset hierarchies

For Matt, what set MaintainX apart from other software was its ability to create in-depth asset hierarchies in a matter of minutes.

“When I saw how detailed you can get with structuring locations, assets, and sub assets, I thought, ‘that's exactly how I need to build our plants,’” says Matt.

“Having multiple organizations inside our instance was really important because we’re a service provider and need to have all our customers organized.”

Mobile and reporting capabilities to turn data into action

Mobile capabilities were high on the list of must-haves for the AEL team. They knew that if information was captured at the point of inspection or repair, it would mean better scheduling, tracking, and reporting. 

“Our guys use MaintainX on their smartphones, and it's great because if they find an issue with an asset, they can take a photo and write what they observe,” says Matt. 

“Not only does the issue get solved quickly, but those observations can also be turned into really slick-looking reports we can use to show what’s happening at a plant and the value of maintenance.”

Results

Reduced downtime

One of the biggest benefits AEL customers are seeing is a drop in unplanned equipment downtime.

“[Our customers] are starting to be deliberate about planning, tracking, and improving maintenance,” says Matt, “which means equipment issues are flagged and fixed, and downtime is going down.”

Kieran has heard firsthand how much of an impact MaintainX has had on the operations of AEL customers in a short time.

“One of the regional managers told me that within the first two months of managing their maintenance program with MaintainX, he's already seen a dramatic improvement in their reliability and production, and a lot less downtime.”

Better safety and compliance

MaintainX has helped AEL’s clients manage and document safety and compliance activities, which has had a significant impact on employees and on the bottom line.

“Health and safety issues are not only being identified, but they’re being addressed more often,” says Matt. 

“This has the added benefit of helping clients generate compliance reports for their insurance companies, which helps them reduce their insurance premiums.”

Higher reliability

AEL is already seeing an increase in equipment reliability for their clients. These promising early results have Matt projecting huge cost benefits for customers in the next 12 months.

“The operational cost is going to decrease significantly over time as reliability improves. And right now, reliability has objectively improved.”

Clearer tracking and more powerful reporting

AEL relies on tracking and reporting to show the value of their services. Nothing has been more valuable than MaintainX when communicating progress and ROI.

“It’s traditionally been really hard to…get people across a company excited for investing in maintenance, but that’s different now,” says Matt. “All I have to do is put a MaintainX report on the big screen in the conference room and it just makes sense to everyone there.” 

What’s next

AEL has ambitious plans to expand its maintenance services to dozens more plants, including manufacturers in Australia. MaintainX will be a big part of how they make good on those aspirations.

“I see the number of client plants using MaintainX rising really quickly,” says Kieran.

“Maintenance has been neglected at a lot of these plants for quite a while, so there's a lot of work required to get them to where they should be. But with MaintainX, that seems completely within reach.”