Cloetta occupies a strong position in the Swedish confectionery market, and it offers a broad and varied assortment of high-quality chocolates, sweets and nuts. Today, Cloetta’s products are sold in more than 50 countries. A great deal has happened since Mikael Andersson began working at Cloetta in 2010. His was a journey that began with insourcing maintenance and taking steps to make the work as simple as possible.
– Basic maintenance work should be simple,” Mikael Andersson, Maintenance Manager at Cloetta, says and continues; It must be easy to enter work orders, input data and extract data. Above all, it must be easy for our technicians. A lot of the work is practical and needs to be done quickly.
Excellent figures
The route Cloetta took to get to where it is today was not a straight line from A to B, but happily, there are figures to show that the business is headed in the right direction. Using MaintMaster maintenance software Since 2010, maintenance costs have fallen by 25 per cent while the production volume has risen by 25 per cent. The emergency maintenance has fallen from 44 to 25 per cent, figures achieved thanks to many different initiatives.
– It’s all based on everyone knowing what they have to do. There are many reasons we have come as far as we have today. We must recognize that things take time to do, and we can’t do everything in the space of a day, Mikael says.
– Although much has been achieved, much still remains to be done. Procedures are available, but not all are in place; things happen that we constantly have to learn from, and we’re working hard to find ways to prevent the same problem from occurring more than once,” he continues.
Maintenance manual
One of the tools used in the improvement work is a maintenance manual prepared according to SSEN 13306 – the European standard for maintenance work. The manual was distributed during a corporate activity day, and it is also used as induction material for new employees.
– The manual is there to function as a guide in the day-to-day work. It serves as our Bible when it comes to improvements and operational reliability, Mikael says.
Cloetta is constantly working to develop the maintenance work and to make it easier; for example, the management of spare parts has come a long way. In collaboration with a supplier, Cloetta has established an operational stock of ready-to-use parts, and this has given the store's department time to work on other things.
Pit-stop procedures, which provide greater opportunities for planned downtime and improved maintenance for selected installations, have finally been put in place.
Well-defined roles and standardized work are factors that have led to a greater ability to work strategically with improved preventive maintenance. Previously, more contract personnel were used; today, because the organization is doing more things correctly, it does not have the same need to outsource work.
– Long-term, structured efforts cannot fail to provide results, Mikael concludes while emphasizing the importance of letting things take the time they need.
