How Cadeco Industries Enhanced their Quality Plan with FTMaintenance

Maintenance Management Challenge

Before they used FTMaintenance, Cadeco Industries faced multiple maintenance management challenges.

Because Cadeco Industries used Microsoft Excel^® to track their maintenance activities, their recordkeeping lacked the automation needed for effective preventive maintenance scheduling. Using spreadsheets also made it nearly impossible to coordinate information across multiple facilities. Additionally, their external auditors had to cross-reference several documents when reviewing the company’s quality plan, making the process more time consuming than at similar facilities.

Another challenge Cadeco Industries faced was coordinating preventive maintenance tasks with the parts they had available in their inventory. Their part counts were not adjusted automatically, leading to uncertainty of part availability when performing maintenance jobs. If the part they needed was out of stock, technicians had to reschedule the work, which lead to longer machine downtime.

Finally, exact labor costs for repairs were not tracked automatically, leading to only rough estimates being relayed to upper management. This caused uncertainty among maintenance managers and executives when allocating funds for the company’s yearly maintenance budget.

The Solution

Cadeco Industries is now using FTMaintenance to implement a comprehensive preventive maintenance program, which is now part of their quality plan. The FTMaintenance Preventive Maintenance (PM) Active module allows the maintenance team to track everything from preventive maintenance work order status and completion times to labor costs and resources, tools used for each job, and more. Maintenance managers use the Scheduling module to set specific job reminders and reschedule jobs quickly as needed.

The Inventory module in FTMaintenance ensures part counts are automatically adjusted upon completion of work orders. Cadeco Industries’ maintenance team is able to see whether or not a part is available and schedule jobs accordingly, reducing downtime. They can store several details on each part, including vendor contact information, all in one place.

With the way each module in FTMaintenance correlates with each other, the maintenance department is able to show upper management reports on exact labor costs for all repairs, justifying their budget needs for jobs such as warehouse building maintenance. For example, when technicians specify that a part was used for a job on a work order form, it is automatically subtracted from the inventory counts, and the cost of a replacement part is added to the total repair costs. This information can then be displayed in multiple reports.

The Results

With FTMaintenance, Cadeco Industries continues to reap the benefits of improvements in their maintenance management operations. The entire department uses the software daily, thanks in part to the online training provided for FTMaintenance. Following this training, they were able to use FTMaintenance CMMS to improve their process efficiency and productivity while increasing their adherence to their quality plan. Jose Hererra, the Product and Maintenance Engineer for all five facilities, says he feels comfortable and is satisfied with FTMaintenance.

The maintenance department is confident in the preventive maintenance program they now have in place. Those that store and receive bulk materials through Cadeco Industries feel comfortable knowing the maintenance team uses a CMMS system to manage maintenance activities. External auditors have noticed a difference in the efficiency of their process when they come on site. Instead of having to read multiple spreadsheets and other documents, auditors can see one compiled report about Cadeco Industries’ quality plan derived from FTMaintenance.

Cadeco Industries has also been able to facilitate better, more efficient scheduling with the features available within FTMaintenance. Overall, their repair costs have gone down and they have been able to more closely monitor their inventory.

About Cadeco Industries, Inc.

Cadeco Industries, Inc. is one of the largest and most diversified green coffee facilities in the USA. It provides coffee warehousing and silo services in over 600,000 square feet of processing and over 100 silos of storage space. The company was founded in the 1920s, with several warehouses and plants based in Houston, Texas. Cadeco Industries has been an FTMaintenance customer since 2017.