Manufacturers: Need to Manage your Equipment Downtime Events? We Got IT.

We Got IT: Downtime Planner Automates the Request, Review, and Approval of Your Downtime Events

Problem and Background

Manufacturing facilities rely on machinery to produce products. From time to time, production supervisors find it advantageous to shut a line down – whether to clean gear, replace parts, wait for an ingredient, or other reasons. Scheduling downtime is better managed when all affected parties know of upcoming downtime events. Yet, a common manufacturing problem involves the ability to schedule and coordinate equipment downtime events.

When our client, a major CPG manufacturer, approached us about a problem concerning their ability to schedule equipment downtime, Vertex’s Solution Scientists understood that a multi-faceted fix was needed. The solution would have to eliminate manual paperwork while providing total visibility into the request and approval status process for the entire enterprise.

Downtime requests are required when production resources (including but not limited to making systems, production lines, or materials) will not be available for production. Scheduling downtime may be needed for initiative testing & validation, checking process reliability improvements, or for other site-wide activities.

Our client’s original process involved several steps with multiple communications that would take days or weeks to accomplish. Requests from emails were transferred into forms whose data would later be entered into a spreadsheet. Additionally, individuals who wanted to know if their request had been approved were required to attend a schedule review meeting each week to hear the response from the planner in person. Each request was reviewed one by one to highlight if it was approved or not (non-value-added time).

The plant needed a solution that was easily accessible and would streamline the flow of information on request status to improve productivity.