Luzeal chooses DIMO Maint MX for multi-sites maintenance management

Testimonial of the agricultural cooperative Luzeal, specialized in the collection of alfalfa, about the implementation of the DIMO Maint CMMS.

For its multi-site maintenance management system, Luzeal has chosen DIMO Maint MX. Prior to the CMMS software, maintenance data was paper-based and stored in Excel tables. Consequently, management and traceability problems quickly developed and were commonplace.

With the solution developed by DIMO Maint, Luzeal benefits from an easy-to-use web solution that remains intuitive even to users not familiar with data processing. There are thus no technological obstacles to distract employees from their core business: maintenance.

How to improve multi-site maintenance management with a CMMS

luzeal tractor

Luzeal is an agricultural cooperative specializing in the collection and processing of alfalfa for ruminants and horses. The company regroups five production plants in Champagne-Ardenne where 210 employees work. The cooperative’s activity is organized as follows:

  • harvesting with agricultural machines such as mowers, forage harvesters, etc.;
  • road transportation to the plants;
  • production of alfalfa pellets and bales.

The marketing of dehydrated products is handled by its subsidiary Desialis. Luzeal also processes beet pulp, grape marc, and wood pellets for domestic and industrial stoves. The cooperative covers 51,000 acres for a total annual production of 440,000 tons. The seasonal activity starts at the end of April and ends at the end of October for the alfalfa, with maintenance taking place throughout the year with a peak in activity during the winter stop.

Luzeal chose DIMO Maint CMMS to digitalize its maintenance processes, primarily to consolidate general and historical data from maintenance interventions. Thanks to the maintenance software, it now also plans to set up a concrete preventive maintenance plan.

CMMS to digitalize maintenance and do away with paper

Alexandre Lelaurin, site manager, says that previously, maintenance knowledge was mainly recorded in paper and spreadsheet form. “Each plant had its own way of organizing information: Excel spreadsheets for historical data, for example, and handwritten notes for technical documentation… The sources of information were very disparate.

As the cooperative got certified ISO 50001 for its energy management system and FCA for animal feed quality, traceability issues began to arise. He explains, “General management decided to harmonize and structure the maintenance function, which employed over 60 people. This is when we started the search for an appropriate CMMS.

Luzeal ultimately settled on DIMO Maint MX, a multi-site maintenance management solution. Employees were involved as well in the final choice of the high-performance multi-site software. The main criteria of the specifications were ease of use, user-friendliness, scalability towards purchasing and stock management modules, as well as the possibility of interfacing with the existing information system. “In the end, DIMO Maint allowed the cooperative to take a technological leap forward, in particular thanks to its 100% Cloud solution.

Employee involvement: a determining factor for the success of the project

maintenance team

Alexandre Lelaurin’s experience was precious for this project: he was familiar with various CMMS solutions, having installed some and even sold one before. According to him, Luzeal benefitted from having a maintenance organization already in place in the company: as a result, their staff already knew of some of the tools and practices, especially concerning work orders. This made anticipating the learning curve possible and facilitated the software adoption by employees.

He adds, “it is important that employees see how the solution is going be useful for their daily work. Getting senior management on board is crucial, as is the timing of the implementation, given that the cooperative is in the middle of the countryside nine months of the year.

A coherent implementation for the maintenance software

The implementation, installation, and training were conducted by a certified DIMO Maint integrator partner. Parameterization took place at the same time as training in order to optimize costs. The deployment was done progressively:

  • At first, the software configuration is kept at its simplest. Interventions are created and summarily filled in, without necessarily recording the number of spare parts used, nor the hours spent.
  • At the second stage, intervention/work orders are fully documented (who did what, hours spent, parts, etc.).Then, the template for intervention requests is defined.
  • The last stage is devoted to the development of preventive maintenance.

About twenty users (supervisor profiles) have been trained and have access to the solution. Initially, only the heads of departments and managers could enter information into the CMMS.

Simplified and optimized preventive maintenance

For the time being, Luzeal is mainly using work orders and intervention requests. Not every information has been filled in yet, but Alexandre Lelaurin believes preventive maintenance will undeniably interest the Pontfaverger site. “We have created preventive task lists, which greatly simplify the daily work of maintenance managers,” he explains.

In the future, the use of tablets in the fields is a possibility.
Finally, “the utilization of a CMMS was seen as a positive during an ISO 50 001 audit. We expect to upgrade the solution to incorporate inventory and purchasing management within two to three years.

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