The Belgian chocolate maker Leonidas urgently needed to improve the management of its maintenance activity, as well as cooperation within its maintenance teams.
To do so, Leonidas relied on the DIMO Maint team and its CMMS software DIMO Maint MX. Discover how the CMMS tool has improved the company’s productivity.
Intuitive and user-friendly maintenance software for the maintenance team
Founded by Leonidas Kestekides in 1913, Leonidas, the most famous Belgian chocolate maker in the world, now has more than 1500 points of sale, spread over 40 countries and 5 continents.
Every day, thousands of people from the four corners of the world praise the quality and freshness of Leonidas products. More than 100 kinds of chocolates are offered today, made in accordance with traditional methods and using only the finest ingredients. Tradition and quality with a modern twist remain the strong principles on which the chocolate maker has built its international reputation.
Within the company however, maintenance managers identified some major issues in their department. For starters, technicians were still using Excel files, which made collaborative work complicated and awkward. Moreover, spreadsheets offered little support for deeper analysis and maintenance management.
As a result, the Leonidas maintenance department promptly made the switch to the DIMO Maint MX CMMS interface to improve the organization of their activity, and, ultimately, optimize the company’s productivity through the implementation of a preventive maintenance plan.
The maintenance department at the heart of the quality approach
« Today, maintenance of over 5,000 pieces of equipment is carried out by a technical team of 16 people. Our technicians usually work on the two production sites in Belgium, and in certain stores », explains Gérald Pigot, deputy maintenance manager.
The maintenance technicians come from various trades, including electrical, mechanical, refrigeration, plumbing, and construction, and bring different skillsets to the team. If needed, subcontractors are also an option.
Among maintenance interventions, half of them qualify as corrective, while 30% of them are preventive and the remainder stems from new projects management.
« Before 2005, technicians recorded intervention requests on loose paper sheets and managed them through a simple spreadsheet. It was cumbersome, not very user-friendly, and impractical to use for analysis. » admits Gérald Pigot.
In the context of the group’s quality approach, the maintenance manager, Mr. Polin, decided in 2005 to recruit Mr. Pigot to work on the selection and implementation of a CMMS solution.
DIMO Maint CMMS to improve maintenance management at Leonidas
The choice fell on DIMO Maint which has been operational at Leonidas since July 2005, with its Equipment, Works, Stock, Purchases, Budgets, Data Access Management, and File Import modules.
« The remarkable quality/price ratio, ease of use, and user-friendliness of the software, in particular through its tree structure system, contrasted with the cumbersomeness and complexity of certain competing offers and quickly convinced us » emphasizes Gérald Pigot.
Today, all the functionalities of the software are deployed, and the main objectives are to:
- computerize both completed and in-progress interventions at the 2 production sites and in the stores,
- document the history of machinery failures,
- track the use of spare parts,
- manage subcontracts,
- implement an effective preventive plan,
- establish reliable indicators to facilitate decision-making.
Major steps of the CMMS project
Closely and efficiently accompanied by the DIMO Maint teams, Gérald Pigot recalls the main stages of the project that allowed the solution to be deployed rapidly and facilitated its adoption by the teams:
- choice and analysis of the equipment to be documented in the database,
- creation of the database tree,
- testing the solution while accounting for the various needs of specific business activities,
- training technicians to use the software,
- creation of virtual repositories in the software (2600 items referenced for mechanical parts, 2900 spare parts for electrical parts, etc.)
- creation of a file with suppliers’ information and integration of this file into the DIMO Maint software
- establishment of a group working on preventive interventions,
- documentation of subsequent Preventive interventions (PI) in the DIMO Maint solution,
- creation of report templates specific to Leonidas
- purchase and implementation of the Investment/Purchase module, indexing of the equipment fleet.
« It is interesting to talk about the internal changes and the structuring effects brought about by the implementation of the CMMS solution. The project has taught our internal teams the usefulness of computerizing/digitizing maintenance while training them in the use of the DIMO Maint software”, explains the deputy maintenance manager.
Preventive maintenance and cooperation between maintenance technicians to improve performance
In addition to these changes in mentalities and the valorization of the work made by the maintenance team, the installation of the DIMO Maint solution made it possible to obtain:
- knowledge of all machine breakdowns,
- the history of the parts used,
- the implementation of a preventive maintenance plan,
- the indexing of all suppliers,
- the combination of consumable and part to several suppliers.
The return on investment is mainly measured by the reduction in machine stoppages thanks to the development of preventive intervention management.
