Sulzer
A nearly two-century-old manufacturing company revolutionizes its maintenance work with dramatic results by switching to Limble.
Introduction
Founded in 1834, Sulzer Ltd. is a Swiss industrial engineering and manufacturing firm headquartered in Winterthur, Switzerland. They are a global leader in fluid engineering and specialize in pumping, agitation, mixing, separation, and purification technologies. They have 180 world-class manufacturing facilities and service centers all over the world. As an innovative company in its field, they need a maintenance system that helps them meet their goals.
The Challenge
After years of doing failure maintenance, Sulzer consistently ran into the same issues. Work orders were completed late (or not at all), resulting in downtime and delays in production. Sulzer’s work orders had an on-time completion rate of only 49% because everything was tracked in an archaic paper system. There was no follow-up, no reporting, and no data to help management understand their equipment cost or cradle-to-grave life cycle.
In addition, the manual process of handling paper work orders and managing dozens of technicians without the use of mobile technology caused unnecessary delays. It would sometimes be days after the creation of a work order before a repair even began.
“I wanted to go paperless. I found that with Limble it was very simple.”
Jon Voeltner, Facilities & Testing Manager
The Solution
They knew they needed to make a change and began looking for a computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) that would meet their needs. They wanted to find a CMMS that had all the functions they needed in one centralized location.
- User-friendly interface
- Automated reports that were useful and actionable
- Great customer support
- Easy upload of their existing data
They found all of that and more with Limble.
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The Result
Within two weeks of implementing Limble, they had uploaded all assets and work orders. After two months with Limble, the rate of completion for work orders rose by 76%. Now 92% of their work orders are completed on time and there are numerous other actionable reports available for the first time ever.
Management finally has a grasp on downtime, labor costs, problem assets, replacement costs, spare parts spend, and so much more. Now that they are finally getting ahead, Sulzer has also been able to start the switch from failure maintenance to preventive maintenance.
Sulzer’s results are typical of a company switching to Limble from a paper-based system. They prove that you can truly revolutionize your maintenance department with the right software.