Case Study
Creating Sustainable Performance: How Toshiba's Maintenance Team Exceeded Objectives with CMMS
Improved maintenance effectiveness and responsiveness
Increase in maintenance resource utilization
Reduction in spare parts inventory required through improved preventive maintenance
The software vendor stopped supporting our old CMMS software, and their new version was prohibitively expensive yet couldn't do what we needed it to. We conducted solution selection with the help of Toward Zero and discovered several other solutions that were a much better fit for us, strategically, functionally, and in terms of affordability. Ultimately, we found that TrakSYS CMMS was the best choice, and so far, it's exceeded our expectations.
The Company
Toshiba America Business Solutions, Inc. (TABS) has been producing toner for printers and copiers for more than 30 years at its facility in Mitchell, South Dakota. With a production floor of over 180,000 square feet and more than 100 employees, TABS has built a strong culture of quality service across its team, its organization, and its community.
The Challenge
TABS' maintenance team wanted to overcome resource constraints and optimize maintenance engineers' time and effort, focusing them on the right things, in the right places, at the right times. Existing maintenance business processes were highly manual and lacked meaningful data, leading to high spare parts inventory and frequent ad hoc part purchases that drove up costs and delayed production.
The team's existing CMMS tool was outdated, no longer supported by its vendor, and unable to integrate with Toshiba's ERP system or transition purchasing and inventory history and functionality to it.
The Solution
TABS had already implemented Parsec Automation, LLC's TrakSYS manufacturing operations management (MOM) system about 18 months earlier, focused narrowly on uptime, downtime, and throughput across its 15 production lines. Inspired by the production team's results, the maintenance team engaged Parsec certified partner Toward Zero to help evaluate CMMS solutions and expand the existing TrakSYS system to include maintenance and repair overhaul (MRO), work order management, parts inventory, and paperless maintenance.
Toward Zero's team understood TABS' objectives, culture, and existing infrastructure, and encouraged the company to closely align maintenance management with production management by building on the existing TrakSYS deployment rather than introducing a separate system.
We wanted to expand the TrakSYS MOM implementation with CMMS capabilities so we could contribute to operations performance improvement, which of course we did. What we didn't expect was the extent to which maintenance engineers became closer allies of the production team. Now our two groups collaborate to solve problems and improve performance instead of playing the blame game.
The Impact
- Improved maintenance effectiveness and responsiveness by over 15%
- Increased maintenance resource utilization by over 10.2%
- Improved efficiency by 5.3% across various production processes
- Improved compliance of production and packaging operations by 5.8%
- Reduced spare parts inventory required by over 15%, based on an improved preventive maintenance process
- Reduced emergency maintenance work orders by over 15% through more accurate root cause diagnosis and documentation
- Simplified the architecture by one less server and one less system to support
TABS' maintenance team wanted to implement better, more effective maintenance practices, but needed better software to support that endeavor. Toward Zero was already a strategic partner, but more importantly their team clearly understood our objectives, culture, business and production processes, and existing infrastructure. They encouraged us to closely align maintenance management with production management and build on the existing MOM technology. This approach has allowed us to go beyond meeting the original goals we set for ourselves; we're compounding the benefits and value of the TrakSYS solution and multiplying the success of the production team.
Get the Full Toshiba Success Story
See how Toward Zero and TrakSYS CMMS helped Toshiba's maintenance team improve effectiveness by over 15%.
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