Greencore selects maintenance management system

London - International food and ingredients manufacturer Greencore Group has selected Spidex Software's maintenance management solution Mainsaver as its preferred CMMS system. The system is to be used across all of its factory locations to enable a free exchange of engineering information and site-to-site visibility.

"We had a wide range of legacy maintenance systems within the group" recalls Alan Ford, chief engineer at Greencore’s facility in Manton Wood. "These ranged from basic paper-and-spreadsheet arrangements right up to fully utilised CMMS packages. The problem was that none of them could communicate with our ERP system or with each other - the effect was a lot of double-entry of data.”

Greencore saw an opportunity to eliminate significant inefficiencies with this project, so it was important to get things right, according to Ford. The examination of options in the CMMS marketplace was, therefore, detailed, thorough and exacting -  taking around three and a half years from project inception through to purchase order.

As well as achieving a high rating against Greencore's functionality requirements, Mainsaver was also adjudged the most straightforward system to use. From a technical standpoint, Spidex was able to show proven Mainsaver deployments across multiple-site environments and interfaces into a wide range of ERP software. The last stage of the process was an extensive cost analysis of the competing proposals.

"There was a very detailed financial evaluation, from which Spidex's offering was shown to be the most cost-effective" said Ford. “Mainsaver’s modular design meant that we didn't have to purchase any unnecessary components.”

The evaluation process started with the development of a 240-point User Requirement Specification against which the capabilities of various CMMS systems were compared. Having eliminated the majority, Greencore then carried out a second comparison exercise between three shortlisted products, from which Mainsaver emerged as the best match.