Building manufacturer selects eMaint CMMS to unite its worldwide plants
Customer Since: 2017 | Industry: Manufacturing
Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope® (OBE) is the world’s largest fully integrated supplier of building envelope products. The Dallas-based company designs, engineers, tests, and manufactures engineered curtain wall, storefronts and entrances, architectural glass, windows, skylights, and more.
Its plants were using an assortment of maintenance management solutions that made sitewide reporting and oversight difficult. The organization sought a single replacement CMMS and selected eMaint because it met its demanding criteria. Together, eMaint experts and the OBE teams completed 33 implementations (a 34th is underway) and created a master “golden” template. The template helped reduce rollouts from nine weeks to six weeks and will streamline future deployments.
BACKGROUND
Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope, a CRH Company, operates in 82 locations and employs 7,000 people. The company designs, tests, and engineers building envelope components, including curtain walls, storefronts and entrances, aluminum glazing systems, and architectural glass.
A building envelope protects a facility’s interior space from the environment and also reduces energy consumption. Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope supplied the architectural glass to the St. Louis, Mo. Gateway Arch, the city’s 630-foot-tall monument to Thomas Jefferson.
OBE stakeholders agreed the company needed a single CMMS solution for unifying its 34 plants. They spoke with several CMMS vendors and selected eMaint CMMS software to help standardize maintenance at the plants.
Frank Lanno, an OpEx Director for Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope, led the multi-site implementation project supported by an internal core planning and implementation team. Chuck Langford, maintenance manager for Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope, helped champion the project through communication with key plant personnel and brought significant experience to the group, including 46 years in maintenance management and experience with CMMS implementations.
CHALLENGES
Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope previously could not track maintenance continuous improvement at its plants because each one operated independently in this regard. The facilities used a diverse mix of maintenance management solutions. Some were already using eMaint or another CMMS software platform, while others counted on a quality control system or had no strategy at all.
The 34 planned CMMS rollouts were more complicated than a conventional multi-site rollout because OBE operated three different business types: glass fabrication, metal fabrication, and metal processing.
IMPLEMENTATION
Before implementing eMaint, Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope took several valuable and essential steps to ensure eMaint CMMS adoption and success. They included:
- Built a concrete use case with leadership, ensuring continuous CMMS program support
- Prepared each plant for the change to gain acceptance before implementation
- Explained how the eMaint CMMS would make the maintenance team’s jobs easier
- Requested input from personnel affected by the change, particularly IT and local plant leadership
“The goal was to meet the facility where they’re at because change has to be absorbed and applied,” said Lanno. “A key success factor is getting all of the right parties involved upfront, especially when you’re talking about a technical solution like software.”
The eMaint and Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope teams used the input to develop a list of plant requirements, including 90 features, and then prioritized the requests. Together, the teams developed user types and mapped CMMS functions to match the three businesses.
Four plants volunteered to be early adopters of eMaint by participating in a CMMS pilot. With each implementation completion, the eMaint and OBE teams learned what worked best. They used that information to create a flexible template that could be modified easily to fit a plant’s technical, managerial, and organizational requirements.
RESULTS
By starting small and custom-scaling eMaint, the implementation teams could repeat successes faster, reducing implementations from nine weeks to six weeks.
To date, Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope has completed 33 rollouts, with one to go. The organization benefits from facility-wide visibility and custom configurations enable better corporate reporting. The next steps include leveraging the system’s inventory control capabilities. Maintenance leaders continue to reinforce training and learning, enabling the company to optimize the powerful eMaint CMMS software more fully each day.
BENEFITS
“Big keys for our approach to change management was providing people with the skills that they need, a reason to believe, and the opportunity to shine. We felt eMaint was a good partner. Their service and support levels are second to none. Being coupled with Fluke, eMaint provides a solid solution through their products and vast experience in asset management.”
– Frank Lanno, OpEx Director for Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope
“I found eMaint to be very adaptable and very expandable as you begin to use it. You can get into some real detail when you’re using the proper hierarchy and naming convention. This has been the best #1 CMMS I have ever had the opportunity to work with. Easy to develop, and assistance is always available! Every module flows into each other allowing fantastic connectivity between modules of information and tasks to perform.”
– Chuck Langford, maintenance manager for Oldcastle BuildingEnvelope