Limble CMMS has helped hundreds of companies around the world increase the productivity of their maintenance teams – and save millions of dollars in operational costs and prevented downtime.
Today, we take a look at Midwest Materials, one of our oldest customers from the manufacturing space. Learn about who they are, the challenges they were struggling with, and how Limble helped them get back on the right track.
Quick overview of results after implementing Limble
After one year of using Limble CMMS, Midwest Materials measured the following:
- Overtime was reduced from an average of 80 hours a month per technician down to just 18
- This reduced overtime costs by 80% ($68k)
- Saved $300k+ as a consequence of reduced machine downtime
- Hundreds of hours of labor saved every month due to increased productivity
- Average purchase turnaround cut from 45 days to under 10 days
- With 85k investment in implementing and using Limble, they have measured 452% annual ROI
The story behind Midwest Materials
Midwest Materials is a family-owned and operated steel service center in Cleveland, Ohio.
They are recognized as a leading carbon, flat-rolled steel processor and distributor, providing customers throughout North America with hot and cold rolled, hot rolled pickled and oiled, and coated steel products.
Their story started in a one-room sales office all the way back in 1952. Today, they have to run and maintain a 240,000+ square foot facility that features state of the art equipment for steel stretching, leveling, slitting, and shearing.
As you can imagine, preventive maintenance for that type of facility and equipment comes with a fair bit of challenges.
Challenges they were trying to solve
Too much reactive maintenance
One of the most pressing issues they were trying to solve was excessive downtime. They’ve estimated a loss of 160 production hours in a single year – and most of it could be tracked down to maintenance-related activities on the production floor.
Maintenance was almost all done reactively, because we didn’t have any central visibility of maintenance trends. Without that data, we couldn’t proactively schedule maintenance or deliver it in a way that didn’t impact production. Instead, something would break down and we’d have to stop our machines to fix it.
With so many breakdowns, overtime was also through the roof, increasing their staffing costs by a massive $250k/year.
Lack of inventory control
One of the most pressing pain points they needed to address was a friction-filled purchasing process which was a direct consequence of the lack of a centralized inventory management system.
There was no inventory management or housekeeping, so technicians were unaware of what parts we were holding, where they were, and whether they had the necessary parts to do their jobs. Additionally, we had shelves packed to the ceiling with old and obsolete parts, which made the bigger picture even more difficult to read.
Before new items could be ordered, technician requests had to go through several managers to get the necessary approvals, alongside an insane amount of paperwork.
Every step was met with delays, sometimes paperwork was lost, and questions were fielded between email chains that often weren’t tied to a PO number, meaning they were easily misplaced too.
They ended up in a position where their average turnaround for a single purchase was 45 days!
Paper-based maintenance
Before they discovered Limble, MidWest Materials was relying heavily on manual, paper-based processes to manage maintenance across the business. The company was losing up to $1MM a year in lost production because unplanned maintenance activities consistently put a stop to their production lines!
Our technicians were brilliant, but our processes weren’t. Everything we were doing was reactive and painful, paper-based, and prone to error and inefficiency.
The company knew the situation was unsustainable.
Our whole system was nothing short of chaotic. With no central visibility or tracking, technicians were in the dark about their order status, which made it incredibly difficult to effectively plan maintenance work and get projects moving quickly.
It was time to move their maintenance operations from the dark ages to the digital age.
How they solved those challenges with Limble
After three months of researching and analyzing the best CMMS systems in the marketplace, MidWest Materials selected Limble as their software of choice.
Limble checked every box. It provided the best overall value—not just cost, but it offered features that addressed all our pain points around purchasing, inventory management, and helping schedule maintenance.
Because Limble is intuitive and provides lots of resources and guidance, they were able to launch ahead of schedule and see an immediate impact on the bottom line.
Like any system, there was a little skepticism at the start, but I was pleasantly surprised how easily our technicians picked Limble up.
Limble’s Purchase Management feature simplified, accelerated, and brought consistency to the previously onerous purchasing process. Similarly, due to Limble’s Parts Inventory Management capabilities they now never run out of critical spare parts.
But wait, there’s more. With a centralized digital maintenance platform, Midwest Material is now able to schedule preventive and condition-based maintenance with ease, significantly reducing inefficiencies and machine downtime. All of that without breaking the bank.
Our costs for implementing Limble are more than covered just by reducing downtime by two hours a month, and we’ve gone much further than that, which is fantastic ROI.
Long story short, with a more proactive approach to maintenance, Limble enables MidWest Materials to keep their machines—and revenue—rolling!
For more info, you can download the full case study here.
