Sean Simon is the SVP of Operations at CIG Logistics, where sand is transloaded and stored for third parties in the oil and gas industry. Before looking into CMMS solutions, his team spent three years trying to manage their maintenance operations with a paper-based system, leaving them with the major issue of not being able to gather or access data. “There’s no way to mine paper. There was no daily summary, no way of tying together comments or keywords.” As a result, trying to track and schedule preventive maintenance was nearly impossible. “It was like owning a car in the 1950s. You had to try to remember the last time you did something and guess at the maintenance that needed to be done in the future”.

Like many organizations, Anaren had a homegrown work order application that had basic asset management functionality. “It was menu driven, so quite cumbersome,” explained Bill, “reporting was limited and it still relied heavily on paper transactions and records. We looked at our business needs going forward and decided this was one area that could be modernized.” On launching the Manufacturing CMMS project, Bill, the business analyst of the company identified three major areas for improvement:1. Improve efficiency by eliminating paper.2. Improve the control of preventive maintenance. 3. Improve inventory management.