Maintenance kneads met
November 1st 2007

Downtime can be avoided by preventative routines, and maintenance anticipated by the provision of accessible and available parts, procedures and documentation. Implementing SolutionsPT's Plan4 has raised uptime and made maintenance management easier for bakery chain Greggs

Trading under the Greggs and Bakers Oven brands, Greggs makes sandwiches, savouries and other bakery-related products, with a particular focus upon takeaway food and catering.

Production and delivery of fresh products is vital to Greggs, it has deployed SolutionsPT's Plan4 Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS) at many of its bakeries and at its savoury products production unit. Planned maintenance and preventative maintenance delivers uptime in these fast running facilities.

The business risk of downtime is important to Greggs as all its production is aligned to delivering high quality bakery related products to its retail outlets.Learning from each experience allows Greggs to achieve sustainable continuous improvement by having accurate and timely maintenance reports from historical data.

Maintenance management is a key activity so Greggs set about investigating a solution that would meet its exact needs. With the cost of downtime at up to £18,000 per hour per plant (expressed as lost output) anything that would reduce downtime was going to deliver a return. A user requirements specification was readily drawn up that defined the core functionality of the solution that was to be delivered.

Greggs has an in-house IT group that has produced functionally specific solution for warehousing, scheduling and its all-important EPOS system, however, CMMS product solutions were also examined in addition to this in-house resource. Following evaluation, SolutionsPT Plan4 was selected as being functionally well suited and being value for money.

Prior to Plan4 the company was dependent upon a paper based system which was ineffective in reporting and history. The lack of computerisation in the task made these tasks ineffective and costly; in addition each plant had its own system, and group level business efficiencies were out of reach.

Plan4 changed all that and although the product has been deployed according to local needs across 12 sites, it is in itself providing rationalisation.

Rationalisation through common part numbers, training and the availability of data for similar machines are three activities that the group as a whole is participating in. Plan4 runs on the company's network and all sites can access other sites for parts and other common requirements.

A key module that was used after the initial commissioning was the Request Logger. This is a software tool that can exist on any corporate workstation that allows requests for maintenance to be made for automatic entry into Plan4's work list. The Request Logger provides a way of making such entries without distracting maintenance engineers that are working on what may be a critical task. Plan4 structures the request logger so that only staff in relevant areas can make requests about the machines in that area. A site's chief engineer can then prioritise the requests.

Hygiene is synonymous with the food industry; during periodic inspection reports from the Plan4 system are examined to ensure that cleaning and other tasks have been undertaken. The clear reports about routine and special cleaning from Plan4 are accepted readily by HSE inspectors; this aspect is handled by a separate Plan4 that is run by the Hygiene Manager. The resulting reports readily and efficiently demonstrate Greggs' Due Diligence in its production.

The maintenance system is an intrinsic part of the hygiene and traceability system, recording who, what, where and when of all cleaning and other hygiene tasks.

"Plan4 does what it says it does, and does it very well," says Greggs' group project engineer, Charles Bragg.

"The presence across the group of Plan4 provides a catalyst for rationalisation and standardisation, all of which we need to maintain our market position of quality and value".