Can you share some information about a larger implementation you worked on this past year?

“Sure. Firestone Building Products is a good example as they had eleven plants using different systems and wanted to unify them on a central platform. They started their implementation in early 2012, and phased in their implementation to all eleven plants over a one year span. “

What strategies did you employ that were unique to an implementation of this magnitude?

“First off, we ensured that the project had both a Project Manager and Technical Lead. Chris Frayer, the Project Manager, established the timetable and ensured the project remained on track. The Technical Resource, Terry Gurley, became a very active participant from the beginning. This type of resource, with such strong knowledge of their business process and internal systems, was integral to keeping the project moving forward. We also deployed a phased approach, starting with a smaller plant and working our way up to the largest. This proved to be quite helpful in getting everything important in place prior to the larger roll-out.”

Did they phase in functionality as well?

“Not really. They pretty much rolled out full functionality including Work Order Process, PM Management, and Inventory Control at each site. The only exception was the parts integration to their Tiny Term system. They implemented a system integration that exports part usage and reconciles on-hand quantity; this was not in place until some of the smaller plants had gone live.”

What were some efficiency measures put in place to keep a project of this size on budget and on-time?

“To allow us to roll-out more expediently, we ran training sessions at multiple sites simultaneously. While I was holding a training session at one plant, Terry Gurley would be onsite at another, using desktop sharing software to allow participants to follow along. Having Terry onsite and available for questions made this approach especially effective and proved to be both time-saving and cost effective .”

Did you come across any difficulties or special challenges?

“The Building Products Division was set up in a single database with each plant established as a separate Repair Center. This allowed them to use repair center access restrictions to ensure that each user only saw data applicable to their plant. However, once parts were integrated, they realized they wanted the ability to see if out-of-stock parts were available from another plant. With the repair center restrictions in place, they didn’t have access to this data. To solve this, they set up a special user account that had access to all repair centers, but could only see parts data. Staff in the stock rooms use this special login to take a peek at stock room inventory at other sites.”

Were there economies of scale with each plant go-live?

“Once the basic structure and process were defined, it was much easier to phase in additional plants. In fact, as Terry continued to gain expertise, he was able to independently handle much of the data importing, allowing me to focus more on the training aspect of the go-live. We brought up the first plant in Beech Grove, Indiana in June of 2012 with a handful of technicians. By the time we rolled-out at their largest plant in Prescott, Arkansas in April of this year, we had a pretty smooth process and were ready for the 70 folks in attendance. All in all, it was a very successful implementation.”

MC Implementations always present challenges, but can you think of one that was especially unique?

“Yes, time is always of the essence to customers, but Kent Power approached their implementation with a very aggressive strategy, indicating they needed to be up and running in four weeks. After searching for the right Computerized Maintenance Management Solution for almost a year, the Kent Power management team was under the gun to make their CMMS dreams a reality. Based in Kent City, Michigan, Kent Power is recognized as a premier constructor of large electrical utility projects across the country. This translates to thousands of mobile assets spread across multiple job sites and locations, all requiring management and regular maintenance. The timeframe was especially challenging since they were basically setting up from scratch and had a pretty extensive infrastructure to bring online. Not to mention they had just hired their CMMS project manager one week before our initial implementation meeting.”

What was their hurry and what were they trying to achieve?

“After working with business strategy consultants from Total Process Reliability (TPR), Kent Power identified a number of areas where they were falling short such as the effective management of maintenance time and lack of preventative measures to ensure that equipment would not fail. Their maintenance process was almost entirely reactive. Their business consultants helped them to understand where they were falling short and what needed to be done to take Kent Power from “great” to “world class”. This involved getting a better handle on the work being performed on assets. They had a fairly manual process, using spreadsheets and emailed work order forms, and were in great need of a more formalized process. I am all too familiar with having to appropriately set customers’ expectations as it relates to the overall project implementation timeline, but with Kent Power there was little room for negotiation and I found it difficult to argue with their reasoning. They indicated that with the structure that they had in place at the time, there was not a good reason why they should not be up and running with Maintenance Connection in four weeks. I found myself becoming motivated by their ambition.”

How did you structure the implementation to meet this challenge?

“Right off the bat I made sure that they understood the importance of having a site champion or project manager that would take an active role in the initiative from beginning to end. We then reset the traditional implementation timeline to break things down into manageable deliverables, ensuring that all key activities required for work order roll out fit the four week timetable. We realized pretty quickly that to deliver a real solution in this short timeframe, some resources and plans had to be shifted. For example, additional funds and resources needed to be directed into early training to ensure that everyone had the skills and information they needed to make this work.”

How much were you able to get up and running in the four weeks?

“First, we defined the asset hierarchy structure and then did an import of some rudimentary spreadsheet data, followed by careful set up of classifications and a few rounds of asset updates to get the asset tree in shape. We then set up the work order process flow and configuration including preferences, ECC setup and SR Configuration. Once labor records were imported and permissions and access groups were established, we tackled setting up PM Schedules on their critical equipment, even importing tasks from available spreadsheets. And we made it; they had a fully functioning work order system on the go-live date.”

Were there any blips or problems encountered?

“Randy Lavoie, the Project Manager, was a rather frequent visitor to our support services during this period. The support team received so many calls that they were initially concerned that I was falling down on the job – throwing Randy to the wolves without sufficient training. Randy was passionate about making this work and kept support on their toes; he felt like part of the MC family he spoke to them so often. But persistence paid off, as he became an expert in his own right.”

What happened at the end of the initial go-live?

“Over the next six months, they continued to refine their process flow and extended their implementation with additional PM processes and Inventory management. They even put in place an automated integration to their fuel management system, Wright Express.”

What would you say was the key to their success?

“That’s an easy one – I attribute their success to Randy, the Project Manager. He was very proactive in making sure each deliverable was DONE and on schedule. This kind of site champion is always key to a successful integration, but with this kind of ambitious schedule it was essential.”

Randy Lavoi Speaking at Checkpoint

First Webinar – Basics of Reporting
We’ll kick things off with a Webinar series devoted to bringing some of our best tutorials to life, beginning with the Reporter.  Our first Webinar entitled “Basics of Reporting: Overview“ will be offered on May 9th at 10:00am PST.  This is Part 1 of a 15 part series on Reporting.  The first few sessions will be a fairly basic overview, and will be focused on new users or review for existing users.  The sessions will build on each other, increasing in complexity and content.

MC Customer Alerts via MC User Connect
Following this Webinar Launch Event, we’ll keep you posted on the dates and time for future events, as well as provide you with the opportunity to sign up through our new MC Customer Alerts. Of course, this means that you’ll want to be signed up for MC User Connect, if you’re not already, and that you remain subscribed to email updates (look for additional information coming soon via MC User Connect regarding your options for MC Customer Alerts).  In addition to information about MC eLearning, we’ll use MC Customer Alerts to keep you up-to-date with important system status updates and other critical information.

We already have a large group of users signed up to attend the Webinar Launch Event, and we can’t wait to add your name to the list!  Click here to sign up and take advantage of this exciting opportunity.

Joe has been an avid sports fan his whole life. His love of football was cemented as a tight end in high school playing for a team that won the state championship and earned a ranking of #6 in the nation. This early enthusiasm has continued and he is now an avid fan of the New York Giants, holding season tickets to their games. And football isn’t his only passion; he claims to be equally devoted to the Yankees and apparently hasn’t found a lot of sports he doesn’t like.

Prior to working in the software industry, Joe spent twelve years as a Club/Bar Head of Security at various spots around New York and New Jersey (trust us, not a lot of folks would want to mess with JoeJ). He then worked closely with MC as a customer for six years prior to joining our team. Joe isn’t finished topping off his resume yet; he is currently working on an MBA with concentrations in MIS and Management and Saint Peter’s University in Jersey City, New Jersey.

Those of you attending Checkpoint later in the month should be sure to search Joe out. Be sure to ask him if he is related to Joe Rogan from Fear Factor/UFC – he never gets asked thatJ…

Improved Index and Search

We are in the process of re-indexing our current content titles and keywords to streamline visual navigation as well as enhance search accuracy.  As the amount of content, videos, articles, and documentation continues to grow, presenting “just the right” piece of information to you becomes more of a challenge. Re-indexing will bring the right information to your fingertips faster and with less effort.

New Notification System

Have you ever felt out of the loop on relevant day-to-day Maintenance Connection news?  Well, next in line with our enhancements is a new notification system to keep you up-to-date with MC User Connect activity and important inside news.  We currently have an option for users to be notified of activity in the User Forum, but our current system doesn’t reach to other areas of MCUC, such as the Library or Announcements.  Our new system will bring attention to items of interest on the site in a simple and easy to read summary.

Zendesk Integration

Our Solution Engineer team is second to none and continues to implement its own innovations and improvements. As you may recall, we introduced the revolutionary Zendesk software in October to better manage tickets and routing.  We now have an integration between Zendesk and MCUC on our radar that will hopefully provide you with the ability to submit tickets directly within MC User Connect.  We are hoping to also give you the ability to review your history and queue and have begun to evaluate the options in hopes of putting something in place this year.

We look forward to providing you with updates regarding these enhancements in the coming months.

The first two preferences simply determine whether the Explorer List should be automatically refreshed upon saving a new or edited record. Setting these to “Yes” ensures that the list is always up to date. Alternatively, if this is set to “No”, you can manually refresh the list using the available Refresh Button as desired.

The third preference allows you to control the number of records that will display in the list. The default setting (BH) displays the maximum number of records per page that will fit based on the current “Browser Height”, without need to scroll. To view additional work orders, the “Next” option is used to retrieve the next page of records.

If you prefer to have more records displayed on a single Explorer page, this setting can be changed. For example, changing the preference to “ALL” will result in all records being displayed in a single scrollable page. With this setting, the user simply uses the scroll/arrow control to move on to additional records.

These settings can be individually defined for each module, based on your business practice and volume of records. In addition to “BH” and “ALL”, this preference can be set to display a specific number of records per page (e.g. 100).

Format Criteria

Explorer Preferences can also be used to define conditional formatting in the Work Order, Purchase Order, Inventory, and Asset Modules. Up to three different format styles can be defined for each of these modules:

In this example, Format Criteria was used to display all assets with open work orders in red in the Asset Explorer.

For instructions on using this valuable feature, refer to the Conditional Formatting Setup Guide available in MC User Connect:

Custom Work Order Filters

The Work Order Module also includes preferences that allow you to define Custom Work Order Filters for display on the Home Page and Work Order Explorer Filter dropdown. Up to 10 custom filters can be defined per RC, such as “High Priority Work Orders for Electrical Shop”, allowing for single click access to important records:

For more information on this feature, refer to a previous blog post on Work Order Features in MC v6.0. The User Interface Configuration section of the MC User Connect Library also includes a video on setting up Custom Work Order Filters.

Rename Custom Field and Connect to a Lookup

In this post, we describe how to tailor a UDF label and connect the field to a lookup of acceptable values. In this example, the feature is being used at an organization that needs to keep track of the type of security access that is associated with their locations and equipment to ensure that technicians have access to the area at which assistance is needed.

For more info, see Lightly Used Features – 2 of 3 – Connect UDF to Lookup…

Using Quick Add Comments on the Labor Report and Tasks

This post shows how predefined “comments” can be used in the Labor Report and Task Completion Comments to support more rapid and consistent data entry. Customers often look for ways to ensure that data entered in the system is consistent for reporting, and this can be a challenge in free form entry fields such as the Labor Report. Taking advantage of the “Quick Add Comments” feature is a great method to increase standardization.

For more info, see Lightly Used Features – 3 of 3 – Quick Add Comments…

Open Smart Report from Email

Customers find that Scheduled Reports are an excellent method to provide recipients with specific information, without the need to access the application and search for the desired data. Smart Email Reports take this capability a step further, providing access to more data and capabilities (“smart elements”).

With the Smart Email Feature, the report is sent with a Smart Mode Button. Clicking on this button prompts users to log in (if so specified), and then presents the report form in the Report Preview Window. Smart features defined on the report can then be used to access additional information, or even update records. Users only have access to the report form and defined “smart elements”; they will not have general access to system features or report setup:

For more info, see Lightly Used Feature – Open Smart Report from Email…

Priority Actions Manager

This post shows how to set work order target dates based on the priority of a request or work order. The Priority Actions Manager lets you designate the number of days beyond the “requested date” on which the target date should be set. For example, you could indicate that all “high priority work orders” should be set with a target date one day beyond the requested date.

For more info, see Lightly Used Features – 3 of 3…

Paul and Will presenting to a potential future MC Customer

Steve presenting to a potential future MC Australia Customer

If you know someone that could benefit from a powerful and user friendly CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) feel free to send them to http://MaintenanceConnection.com

Files attached through this feature are tied directly to the given record and are not generally available from other records or modules. For example, if you attached a LOTO (lock out – tag out) to a procedure as a Miscellaneous Attachment, it would only be tied to that specific procedure. If it applied to other procedures, it would have to be individually uploaded to each of them. In contrast, if a LOTO was placed in the Documents Module, it could be referenced from all procedures to which it applied.

Miscellaneous Attachments tied to procedures or assets can automatically be propagated to any associated work orders. It should be noted, however, that Miscellaneous Attachments cannot be designated for inclusion on a printed or emailed work order (or purchase order).

Note: New Work Order Setting Preferences are available to indicate whether or not Miscellaneous Attachments tied to Assets and Procedures should transfer to newly created work orders.

The Miscellaneous Attachments feature can be very valuable for attaching discreet information to a specific record. For example, you might want to attach receipts, invoices or test results to a given work order:

While images are typically stored on the “Images” sub-tab for easy previewing, they can also be attached on the Misc Attachments tab in order to have all information maintained in one place:

More Info…

As mentioned last week, the MC User Connect library has a very helpful guide available to assist in determining the best approach to use:

The document includes a Feature Comparison Table highlighting the differences between the available methods.