How Sugino Corp. Built a Single Source of Truth for Thousands of Customer Machines

Challenge

Sugino Corp.'s service operation looked very different from a typical maintenance department. Instead of maintaining equipment in one facility, technicians traveled to customer sites across North America to inspect and repair complex industrial machines, each with unique equipment, documentation, and service requirements.

“If I want to grow this, I need somewhere to stick all my data,” said Don Reeder, President & COO of Sugino Corp. Before Limble, critical information was difficult to organize and access — engineers relied on multiple systems, manuals, and spreadsheets to find what they needed, while service documentation required additional administrative work after returning from the field. Repair jobs were especially painful: when a customer sent in broken equipment, there was often little formal tracking of where it stood in the process or who was responsible for it next.

As Yoshi Ono, who has led Sugino Corp.'s CMMS rollout, explained, the goal wasn't simply to digitize maintenance — it was to create a repeatable service process that everyone could follow. The team set out to:

• Standardize service workflows across engineers
• Build a searchable library of customer assets, manuals, and service history
• Improve visibility into technician labor and service activity
• Reduce time spent creating customer service reports
• Create better reporting for warranty work, labor utilization, and customer support

Solution

Sugino Corp. involved its entire service organization in evaluating maintenance software—not just management—and ultimately selected Limble for its ease of use and flexibility across desktop and mobile devices. 

“You guys showed really, really well. It was a group decision. The service team ran things through the interviews, and they all liked what you had.” — Don Reeder, President & COO, Sugino Corp.

Working closely with the Limble team, they redesigned and standardized how service work is managed from start to finish.

Engineers now complete inspections, repairs, and service documentation directly within standardized work order templates, reducing manual effort while creating a consistent process that everyone can follow.

At the same time, they centralized machine documentation—including manuals, service history, photos, inspection records, and parts information—creating a single source of truth for every customer machine. The team also redesigned workflows connecting sales, service, purchasing, and warehouse teams, giving everyone visibility into the status of repairs from the initial customer request through final delivery.

Instead of searching across spreadsheets, manuals, and disconnected systems, engineers now have one place to access the information they need before, during, and after every service call.

Sugino Corp. began with its highest-volume product line, the Jet Clean Center high pressure deburring and parts cleaning systems, and is now expanding the same standardized approach across additional serialized product lines.

Results

Engineers spend less time documenting work

By capturing inspection details directly within Limble, Sugino Corp. significantly reduced the manual work required after technicians return from customer sites. Instead of recreating service reports from handwritten notes or memory, engineers complete documentation once while performing the work, allowing them to move on to the next customer faster.

“When the engineer comes back to the office, they're ready to go to another job right away.” — Don Reeder

Standardized service across every technician

Limble enabled the team to replace inconsistent documentation with repeatable digital workflows. Standardized work order templates ensure engineers follow the same inspection process regardless of location, helping deliver a more consistent customer experience while improving reporting quality.

"We're trying to cut down technicians' time and effort on site." — Yoshi Ono, CMMS Implementation Lead, Sugino Corp. 

A centralized library for every customer machine

Rather than searching through multiple systems for machine information, they now manages customer assets, documentation, spare parts, service history, and manuals in one place. With every service record tied directly to the equipment, engineers have the context they need before arriving onsite, while managers have complete visibility into each machine's maintenance history.

Greater visibility across the service organization

Because service activity is now captured consistently, leadership can better understand technician utilization, warranty work, customer support activity, and service performance. The standardized data also gives Sugino Corp. a stronger foundation for future reporting and continuous process improvement.

Vision Ahead

Reeder is candid that their use case — supporting equipment across hundreds of customer sites rather than a single plant — pushes the boundaries of a typical CMMS deployment. But that's exactly why the long-term vision is so compelling. “My dream is that a guy walks out to a customer, has a work order drafted for what he's supposed to do, and literally everything about that machine — mechanical drawings, electrical drawings, manuals, programs — is right at his fingertips,” Reeder said. “He does his work, produces a service report, and away he goes.”

Sugino Corp. is now exploring how to connect Limble with its broader systems, including an in-progress SAP S/4HANA upgrade and its payroll platform, to bring quoting, service records, and job costing into a single, connected workflow. The team has also discussed layering in a business intelligence platform to unify reporting across systems as those integrations come online.

“This is an investment we don't take lightly, and one we're committed to. If anybody ever asked me what I think about Limble, I'd say: get it tomorrow. It's going to help your business.” — Don Reeder