Rosti Goes MaintMaster
A comprehensive project with lots of interesting features
When the guys at Rosti are putting their minds into something, its usually big! And this time its MaintMaster. Rosti is a Swedish manufacturing company focused on plastic molding and all kinds of services associated. One of the interesting things is that they are running their customers machines as well as their own machines at the production facility. This means that the maintenance department must maintain both their own machines as well as the customer machines and equipment located at Rosti in Gislaved.
To manage this challenge and to get control over in-house maintenance and maintenance tasks for the customers, Rosti has decided to introduce MaintMaster.
The Rosti Maintenance project team together with our MaintMaster project Manager Mikael Andersson has now started with the implementation of MaintMaster. Although MaintMaster has only been rolled out to a limited spectrum of potential use cases and there is still work to be done, Our Salesman Johan Peterson has checked back with the project team to see if we are on track.
What is the most exciting part about working for Rosti?
I’ve been with Rosti for quite some time now in a variety of different roles. The reason I stayed that long is that im really thriving with my work buddies. On the other side, we have very advanced technology in our equipment. That is insanely interesting to work with because we are developing the machines as well as the products that they produce and the optimization of the production processes. Plus, we have a lot of contact with our customers.
I agree – I have been here for almost 1.5 years attracted by working with modern machines, high-tech automation, and the challenge in our 24/7 production we have in Gislaved, largely around the clock, all year round. We are working in the cooperation but also closely together with all kinds of other companies. This makes it very interesting..
What got you to decide that you needed a CMMS?
I had previously been working at a company that was using a CMMS in their maintenance department. Therefore, it felt very natural to introduce a similar system and way to work at Rosti as well.
We are not only running our own machines, we also have production where we are running our customers machines.
Especially with our customers, it is important that we have control over costs and hours that we spend, to have a good dialogue with the customer and to talk about improvements and how to handle spare parts and such. Previously, we did all of that manually in excel but it did not give us the amount of tracing possibilities that we needed.
The most important part is that we need everyone to register what we do. So that we see where we spend our time and resources.
What would be the consequences if you didn’t work on these questions?
Due to the fact that we have very long -lasting customer relationships, we need keep track of everything that happens at the customer machines and equipment in order to play an important role in their improvements and product development.
The other reason is that we can track and see what is causing problems here at Rosti. So, we need the software for our improvement-orientated mindset as much as the discussions that we have with our customers. In that sense it is both good for us as much as it is for them.
How long have you been using MaintMaster?
We made the decision to start using MaintMaster in autumn 2019. Soon after, our project group started the MaintMaster Courses “System Introduction” and “MaintMaster as a tool”. After the courses, we were able to start building up the object tree in MaintMaster on our own in order to “Roll out” MaintMaster in the organization in February 2020. This is when we started educating our operators to do correct error reporting in MaintMaster.
During approximately the same period, we educated our maintenance staff and quality assurance personnel that participated in System Introduction to follow up on their tasks in MaintMaster. That came in very handy due to the corona restrictions.
So, at the end of February, all the production staff, the technicians and the quality people were using MaintMaster.
How many people have been educated on the use of MaintMaster?
We have about 60 to 65 employees that have received a MaintMaster education in one way or another depending on their level and roll. There are even some external partners that have received the education with us…
You had the introduction and implementation with the MaintMaster project manager and Coach Mikael Andersson. How was the collaboration?
We ran in to some trouble regarding the scheduling of workload, but Mikael was very helpful in getting us to focus on the right questions. It has been a bit troublesome to get everyone aligned when it came to finding the right way to put our thoughts and processes into the system. Mikael was questioning a lot of the things that we took for granted in order to get us to really think through how we want the system to be set up. It’s probably because he has done this several times before.
It has always been a good dialogue and together we figured out quite well how MaintMaster will be used in the best possible way.
We also had very quick support and follow ups on our questions. Usually, we got feedback and answers the same day or the day after.
One of the greatest resources of this project has been the experiences that Mikael brought to the table with his background in maintenance. That helped us to find the right processes really quick. Its way more efficient than having developers or system administrators come up with their own ideas on workflows as they don’t know maintenance that well. This has been a big difference compared to other implementation projects that I have been part of. This actually applies to other aspects such as the courses and the MaintMaster support as well.
Another plus is the fact that Mikael has set up the project according to the international Maintenance Standard EN SS 13306 along the way. So, we basically got that implemented as a bonus without having to worry about adopting to the standard later on. That is very appreciated.
You were already thinking very much in the right direction and using a lot of the right structure but sometimes it can be difficult to put all these thoughts into the system in the right way. You were already working in a very standardized way in production and you were really quick to adopt which has been fun for me as I felt that I had an impact.
Was anything particularly difficult?
Not really. one thing that has been a good lesson for me during the courses was that we always drew the processes before we started to set them up in MaintMaster. That way, we could make sure that they actually worked in real life. If you draw them and discuss them in the team, you don’t have to do it more than once and you get everyone on-board. It’s really important to involve everyone that works with the system and ask them for their opinions. This way they can introduce their suggestions and improvements. At the same time, it has always been easy to change things if needed as MaintMaster permits us to do the changes ourselves.
If you would start over the process now, what would you do differently?
There is nothing about the collaboration with MaintMaster that id do differently. One thing that could have gone better is to get more people at Rosti in the process and wake their interest earlier.
We did a study trip to another MaintMaster customer. They work with MaintMaster in a very intelligent way. We could have been a few more people from our side on that trip in order to show the benefits of MaintMaster as well as all the information that the system can provide to more people. I think the networking between different MaintMaster customers is something that should be aimed for more.
Now it’s time for the moment of truth: How often do you use MaintMaster?
It’s basically 24/7 all day long. Someone is always logged in.
Personally, I use MaintMaster about once a day. Maybe in the morning, maybe afternoon or evening. I usually look at the frequencies of error reports of different equipment or departments as well as how well our predictive maintenance is doing compared to the corrective measures.
We are already in the middle of an improvement project for the production where we are using MaintMaster as a tool to drive improvements. The idea is that all equipment from being prepared to the point when it is taken out of production is documented in MaintMaster and accessible in MaintMaster. The guys at the project are really eager to help out with this.
We have already implemented our security policy and incident reporting in MaintMaster. This is where the operators can report a risk or suggest improvements in MaintMaster. This way, we have all the information in one place so that the technicians can plan their time better as they are the ones conducting all that work. We (in the management) get the overview when it comes to improvements that need to be done in different places as well as risks that are to be eliminated.
It seems that the operators have quite some responsibilities for their environment. Does that go hand in hand with TPM activities?
There are two facilities within Rosti that will start their TPM Journey towards the upcoming autumn. We call these measures “The Rosti Way”. It is to be expected that MaintMaster will be an important support and gear in this whole process. Especially with the maintenance standard and the educations that you offer, I believe that MaintMaster will be an important part of that journey. It is very good position to be part of initiating this process here at Rosti and MaintMaster is a great tool that is even capable of supporting TPM activities. We expect it to be the standard when we are done.
This sounds really exciting. And we are looking forward to being part of this journey. One thing that we can already disclose is that there will be networking events and seminars where we show other MaintMaster customers the progress that is made here.
