Getting the Green Light

Transcript

I'll do a quick intro on our topic today. So this is getting the green light. Today's, webinar is kind of gonna be all about how maintenance and operations teams can really unlock the resources and recognition that they need in order to drive success across their organization.

We've got some really fantastic speakers here who have done an excellent job at their organizations of really driving value and making business cases for the resources they need and improving their overall maintenance and operations.

So we're at twelve o one now eastern time. I'm gonna go ahead and jump in and introduce our speakers here. We've got Stephanie McKennell. I'll hand it over to Stephanie to do an introduction.

Thanks so much, Luca. It's awesome to be here. I am the protection services senior manager for Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the Momentary, our sister event campus.

I oversee all of the security operations at both of these institutions. And prior to joining protection services, I was part of our operations team, which meant being involved with facilities, tools and grounds, and construction management. And it was really on that team that I, was actually the one that got the approval proposal for Limble, did all the research, and and did that before transitioning to protection services where I still utilize Limble in some pretty creative ways that we'll get into later.

Thanks, Stephanie. And we've got Ryan here, maintenance manager at Allagash Brewing. Hey, Ryan.

Hey. Yeah. So I'm the, maintenance manager here at Allagash Brewing.

I've been with Allagash since two thousand twenty two. So I'm responsible for all of the maintenance team and asset asset reliability for the whole campus.

Before I came here, I just had a ton of experience with, you know, asset reliability and maintenance systems with Nestle in the bottled water business, for twelve years. So had a ton of training and ton of experience and excited to find Limble and find, a CMMS system that has really helped us out, and and we've been able to leverage.

Great. Thanks, Ryan. And then Sean, the engineering director over with Ryan at Alagash Brewing Company.

Yeah. Thanks, Luca. I'm Sean. Definitely. I'm the engineering director at Allagash. Been here since two thousand and twelve.

I've gone through multiple iterations of CNS systems here at the brewery and, use it, as Ryan had mentioned, Florida and asset management, facility management, and brewing equipment management, and and then various other facets of the, craft beer scene. So happy to be there.

Great.

Well, thanks so much everyone for joining. My name is Luca Jordan. I'm the senior product marketing manager here at Limble.

Let's let's jump right in. So we've got an agenda today where we're gonna kinda start by talking about the challenge that maintenance and operations teams can face in getting the green light for resources. And we're gonna dive into some of these specific use cases. So replace versus repair or advocating for new equipment for your facilities, approval for new staff, or getting buy in executive buy in on additional headcount to add to your team, the role that a CMMS plays and how this can help unlock different resources that you may need, and then kind of shifting that larger mentality across the organization around maintenance from kind of a cost center to more of a value driver.

So jumping in here just to kind of start out, would love to pose a quick poll to the audience.

Kind of when you think about your larger organization, how would you say the leadership team and the rest of the org view maintenance on a scale from one to four. So one kind of being, hey. They only really think of us when something breaks down or there's a problem.

And then four kind of be the other end of the spectrum. We're really seen as a value driver. We're doing much more than preventing or repairing breakdowns. We're driving strategy.

We're being preventive. We're cutting costs. We're impacting the company's bottom line. Two and three kind of falling in the middle of that scale.

Give everybody another second here or two here to go ahead and respond.

Looks like we've got nine responses here.

Jumping up to twelve.

Give everybody a couple more seconds.

It's an it's an interesting kind of spectrum here. You know, I think different it can it can kind of vary depending on the day or the team, but it'll it'll be really interesting to kind of get a understanding of of who's on the call here and what types of challenges you all are facing when it comes to perception across the organization.

Alright. Great. We've got about twenty about thirty responses now. So let's jump in and and tech take a look at those results.

Alright. So it looks like you guys are doing pretty well. Looks like most folks are saying they're kind of more towards the value driver end of the spectrum. We do have some that are a little bit more out of sight, out of mind.

And then we've got on the other end of the spectrum, a handful of attendees here that are really seen as that value driver, which is which is fantastic. So I'll kind of jump into the challenge that we think about when we look at that spectrum. It really comes to this cycle where, you know, if you're over here and executive decision makers are seeing maintenance as more of a cost center, they're gonna be much less likely to invest in new resources for the maintenance team. Ultimately, that's gonna mean that your team is under resourced. You're experiencing more breakdowns, and it's gonna kind of further perpetuate that notion that maintenance is more of a cost center. From there, you're gonna have more downtime.

You're gonna have less ability to quickly and cost effectively address challenges and get equipment up and running because you may not have the staff or the resources that you need to do so.

Again, reputation and morale department. So it's kind of this self perpetuating cycle that we're that we're looking to change.

Three steps that we've heard are really effective across the maintenance teams that we work with is kind of posing their case when they want to unlock some sort of new resource for the department with kind of this three step system. The first being gathering the data that's gonna help support that case.

Really to help make it not just this is my opinion. This is not a hunch or a feeling. There's tangible data here to back up this request that I'm making and the impact that it can have on our organization.

Two, posing that in a larger business case. What are the impacts that we're gonna see as an organization? What are the numbers and the outcomes that we're gonna see from this data that we've collected? And how is that gonna change if we get this new equipment or we hire this additional person? And then finally, implementation. Following through once you do get that green light and ensuring a really seamless implementation and continuing to kind of track the data and number over time to be able to show this was successful, here's what our ROI is, here's the impact that this has had.

Just kind of further boosting yourself and your department up as that value driver and really exemplifying here's why it's important for us to kind of make these decisions and make these invest investments. Here's the long term impact that that's having.

This is super quick. This is a survey that we ran earlier this year and basically identified that two of the top three challenges that the maintenance industry is facing are around aging equipment and workforce limitations. And that's just to kind of contextualize why we're really digging into those two topics during this webinar.

So jumping off with new equipment here. So one more survey or we've got this one and one more. So second survey for the for the team here. We'd love to kind of hear where you are today in terms of getting new equipment. Let's say you have, equipment that is requiring more maintenance work than other equipment, or that is experiencing more failures or longer downtime.

Experiencing more failures or longer downtime, and you really think that you guys need to replace that, that piece of equipment, you kind of bring that up to management and try to get budget and approval for that. What is what does that process look like on a scale kind of from one to five? So, a, we've got very difficult. It's unlikely that you're gonna get any budget or approval for new equipment.

E being super easy. My leadership team hears that we need new equipment. They're ready to invest in it. Let's just go for it. And then we've got kind of that scale in between of easy depends and difficult.

Just kind of curious what that what the lift looks like and what the likelihood if you kind of had a strong case that you would see being able to get that new piece of equipment that your department needs.

Got about twenty submissions here. I'll give it another minute or so.

Okay. Great. We are at about thirty responses, and let's let's kind of take a look at what that looks like.

A lot of depends.

So I think that makes sense. It depends on the equipment. It depends on the cost of it. It depends on how much it's costing you today.

It does look like we're not having any any very easies. And then a decent amount of of folks also saying it's it's pretty difficult to get that equipment. So, hopefully, the discussion with the group here and some of the content that we're sharing can help alleviate that difficult process around getting the equipment approval.

You know, going back to our framework of data business case implementation, it all really starts with that data. So relevant data that might be helpful for you to look at when looking to replace a piece of equipment kind of comes down into two categories. We've got your asset history and your maintenance history. Asset history is really gonna be around the unplanned downtime that you're having, how much production revenue is impacted by that downtime, how much you're spending on consumable parts to continually be repairing the piece of equipment.

And then on the maintenance side, it's more around those labor hours, invoice costs, overtime hours. We're we're looking here, you know, at play planned and unplanned work orders. How much unplanned work are we having? How many hours are being spent preparing this one piece of equipment?

And what are the implications in terms of labor costs for internal staff members and then also invoices for anybody external that may be coming to maintain or service that equipment.

And it's important to kind of compare this with your problem asset against some of your more high performing assets. So you can really see what the difference is there in the impact.

Ultimately, this data should help you calculate your total cost of ownership. And from there, be able to say, here's what we're spending to maintain this asset. Here's what it costs to replace it. And how long is is it before we're kind of breaking even and then in the green?

But I would love to open this up to our panelists here to kind of share some experiences that you all have had in in investing in new equipment. What does the process look like? And what what kind of advice can you give to our listeners here?

Yeah. I can jump in. I think the you know, what really helped me, you know, make a case for, you know, either new equipment or investment use to kinda show here is the actual numbers. Here's, like, the PMs we've done on a piece of equipment. Here's, the repairs we've made, and then these are, like, the projected repairs we need to make, and these are all the dollars associated with that. Having that with, you know, work order history and, number of work orders and how many man hours are going into that is a whole different discussion when I have all that data and facts versus when it's just my hunch or I'm just you know, they just have to trust me because I said so.

It really, like, it really helps them so that they can feel like they're making the right decision.

And then it also helps me because then it has more, data and facts behind what I'm saying. So I think, you know, I've done this several times in my career, and I think anytime that I've gone in with not without the data and facts, it's a really tough sell. But as soon as you have that, it just makes the conversation so much easier.

And luck luckily enough that the dam is currently me right now for Ryan. So a hundred percent agree with, his his his thoughts and points there is that once you see that once you have actually hard data to look at and to review as it comes to assets and decision making, you then typically have financial or operational data to bounce it off and go, yeah. That that does actually make sense. That machine is costing us quite a bit to either repair or maintain or is a downtime number associated with it. And without that data, it just becomes hearsay and but as a really good way of easily getting and digging into that data on a per, asset basis.

Honestly, I agree with the guys completely.

To add, we have a slightly all of that is true, but we have a slightly different side with a lot of our new construction happening right now where we're not just looking at the immediate needs of replacement of our equipment. We're also looking for we have, like, a lot of different warranties that we're having to track and understand when are those warranties on different pieces of equipment and related to a lot of our new construction. When are they coming up? When are they gonna be done?

So this has allowed us to track all of those and the alerts being built in and saying, hey. This is about to expire. That's about to expire. That's really helped us with our budgeting process looking forward, like, through the years too.

So it's you don't just want all this information when you know you need to replace something. You also want this information to plan ahead.

Yeah. I think the the bounce off what Stephanie said too is there has been times when, you know, some of the mechanics have really advocated for this piece of equipment is, needs to be replaced, and they they wanna plan ahead and you wanna do the right thing. And I've dug into, you know, the data we've collected and found out that, hey. This piece of equipment has failed several times, but we have no PMs attached to that asset.

So then it's a hard case for me to say that to Sean of, like, hey. We need to replace this piece of equipment when we're not doing any PMs on it. So then implementing a PM, you know, getting the techs to look at it.

And then, you know, some of those times, it's usually like that solves a problem. Like, we we we now could plan ahead, and now we can see that it actually had nothing to do with the piece equipment is bad. It's just we were not maintaining it. But then on the other side of that, I've had it where you have then implemented PM, done PMs on it for several rotations, and it keeps failing. So then you just feel better that, okay. There is something to this. We do need to, you know, plan ahead and replace it.

Great. Alright. Well, kind of shifting gears now into new employees.

So when we're talking about getting the green light for new employees, same kind of question that we posed to the audience previously. We'd love if you could help out and participate in this poll specific to new hires, new staff, or maybe backfilling a role after somebody leaves.

How do you feel the how difficult do you feel it is to get the approval from finance, HR, your boss, whoever is kind of involved in that decision making process to say, we're we're gonna be able to go ahead and give you that extra technician or, you know, that, additional resource or backfill that role for a mechanic that left or whatever it is.

How how do you feel from very difficult to very easy? You're able to staff your team the way that you need to in order to be successful so that you don't have an excessively large maintenance backlog or your task age isn't extremely large because you just don't have enough staff to get to get to things. And this is less around kind of the ability to make that higher once you have the budget and more of that first step of, yes, we can go ahead and and try to find somebody for this role.

Great. Thanks everyone for for participating in the polls.

This is really helpful for us to to understand how to how to best shape this webinar for you all. So really appreciate the active engagement.

Okay. Let's see. We've got a little over thirty responses here.

Looking pretty similar to kind of what we saw around equipment. It's never super easy.

It kind of ranges from very difficult to easy with most most folks, of course, here saying it depends.

So when it comes to new hires and that first step of collecting the relevant data, an important thing here is to really just understand the volume of tasks that are not being completed or are just being delayed because you don't have the bandwidth to get it all done. And so through that and through understanding kind of what your workload looks like today, the average amount of work that somebody on your team is able to complete. You can really estimate what the impact of having an entirely additional person would be able to have. So some data points to consider here, maintenance backlog, this is the number of tasks that are created across your PMs, your work requests, your work orders, how many tasks are being created and how many are being completed, average time to start a task. If you're understaffed, it might take longer to get to a task.

On time versus overdue, overtime costs, of course, if your team is working overtime really frequently, that's probably an indication that you could use an additional headcount.

Average weekly workload per team member, that kind of helps you understand what additional capacity you'd be adding if you added someone to the team.

And then planned maintenance percentage, this isn't really directly one to one, but we have noticed that teams that tend to be more understaffed tend to be more reactive I I would love to hear from the group here kind of what do you all think about this, and what has your experience been like receiving approval for new hires?

Oh, man. We the the new hire side has been a huge part for us.

So we we are in the process of not just multiple expansions, but, like, a whole new constructions, growing teams. I mean, it is just an unreal amount of growth happening, not just at Crystal Bridges, but we have kinda have a campus of different philanthropies, businesses, including a medical school, all happening on the same property and all honestly being maintained, intentionally with some of the same teams. So that means, for instance, we've got a mechanic's garage, and we are using more vehicles.

So we've been able to use, the the PMs, the work orders, everything with all these new vehicles to be able to justify needing more mechanics and needing more specialized mechanics. So having all these records have actually been able to show us what things are we sending out to mechanics garages to, take care of things like repairing ACs on our shuttles versus fixing a flat tire.

So that's been really important to get not just more mechanic staff, more qualified, better paid, making sure that we are compensating appropriately to retain the right people for these growing fleets.

It proved similar to what one of the guys said earlier. We weren't doing planned maintenance on some of our vehicles. And so as cringy as it is to say, we took one of our shuttles in because we found out it had zero oil in it.

And so there were some really huge gaps in our maintenance plans that could create huge, huge issues with our budgets.

And this really, has given us a lot more data to support that. So, you know, we had burnt out a previous mechanic. We were having lengthy work log times. We're like, why why can we not get x, y, and z fixed repaired on time? Why is our equipment sitting for so long? You know, there were all these questions from the higher ups, and there were just too many layers of separation and no data to be able to support why we were seeing these issues, why departments were frustrated, why things were out for so long. And all of these records have cut out all of those questions in a way that I think I knew I I knew the value going in because we had nothing previous, but this really supported the new hires and the support for our mechanics team, not just, our facilities team as well.

Yeah. And then for Allagash, we had a very specific situation where we had implemented Limble about five or six months earlier and really had a it really had a going. We had all the systems in place, and then we lost the mechanic. So he left.

And at the time, it was the middle of winter, so it wasn't necessarily like a automatic backfill for all positions, which is always a little bit stressful because you know summer's coming and then comes all the work.

So what I was able to do is with Limble and having a really good CMMS system, I was able to take that six months of data, and I have all the different dash boards showing, like, the weekly plan, showing what workloads on each mechanic. And I was able to go and sit with the executive team and like, with my laptop and show them, like, hey. This is all the work that that mechanic was doing that we no longer have. All the other mechanic workloads are completely full. So if we you do decide not to backfill this position, this is what we're sacrificing, and these are the risks associated with that.

And that was just a very visual, clear, like, green light from the the VP of just like, yeah. Okay. Absolutely. We do not wanna, like, miss out on this stuff.

Probably made them feel better when they knew exactly what they were doing, what they were approving.

So then that really was really used Limble in in a really good CMMS system to, like, leverage that to just make it a clear decision on what is the right thing we do.

And, Sean, maybe you could speak to how you you know, from your perspective, how that played out.

Basically, a clear using data to clearly justify the cost of maintenance. Maintenance is always seen as, you know, overhead or, you know, money, like, kinda in the background in the money that you don't wanna spend. But, you know, Ryan was the way that Limble presented the data via Ryan's presentation of it and using the data with, you know, realized examples of that technician's work and how how it would have to be basically filtered across the remaining mechanics, you know, and painted a very clear picture of how maintenance not don't look at it as overhead. Look at it as potentially cost savings.

And, like, if you don't add this mechanic roll back in, it's gonna have a negative impact on the facility. It's gonna have an negative impact on the remaining mechanics on the team, and let's not go down that path. I'm using the data that we've presented in a way that we've presented it, as a positive to to get that role back filled and and continue on with, the way that we manage the department here.

Yeah. I think the other the other thing too just to kind of, you know, close that loop is that, like, when anytime I feel like I'm asking for a mechanic, I feel it's kinda like my reputation on the line of you know, My reputation's on the line for my opinion of what is needed and what's not. And it made me feel better that I was asking for the right thing because I I knew exactly what the techs were doing. It wasn't like I felt like we were, you know, rightly staffed or I felt that our techs were really busy.

I knew they were busy, and I knew how much we were getting done on a weekly basis. And it just made me feel more confident asking where in the past, I wouldn't have had that data to lean against. I would just it wouldn't surely just be my opinion of if I felt like we were rightly staffed or if we needed help. So I think that really gave me the confidence when you're really talking about, a, it's my reputation on the line, with making big decisions because labor is a big financial decision anytime you you make it.

So I thought that was also really helpful complete changing factor in getting things approved because when you're working with all of all of our teams that are doing all this work, making all these things happen, you know, we know that they're the unsung heroes of the that just make everything work and everybody thinks it's flawless.

Right? But we know how much it takes and how much is getting put into all of that. And it's so nice to have data. Data doesn't lie.

Not that I don't think any of your c suites think that any of us are lying about how hard our teams are working, but it took out took the wind out of their sails, you know, to be able to question, well, are we really being that efficient? Are we you know, aren't there a few they we always got those same questions. Well, couldn't we just do something a little bit different here? You know, they they started trying to, in the past, kind of nitpick.

But when we came back with data graphs, charts, hard facts, They had nothing to say in response. And I mean that in a good way, not in a us versus them way, in a really good way that they're like, well, you're right. Like, you guys can't make this up. Here's everything.

And so I just I couldn't agree more with the confidence it gave us going into those discussions, knowing we had everything to back up what we were saying. And it took that question out of the C suites mind.

Great. Well, I think we've honestly spoken to this next one quite a bit, but would love to just hear a little bit more kind of large scale. How does CMMS play a role in unlocking the resources you need and kind of in that I know you've talked quite a bit about, like, that larger strategy and that forecasting and that forward looking vision beyond just the right now. I'd love to learn a little bit and share with our audience the role of a CMMS and your process for kind of getting buy in on technology and getting approval to to to go with the CMS in the first place?

So our story is pretty funny. I think funny because it's cringey at the same time.

You know, the museum, we started out very small and very humble in stature. You know, we were built to receive maybe about two hundred and fifty thousand guests a year. And currently, before our expansion, we are receiving over seven hundred thousand guests a year, hence why we're expanding because we do not have the infrastructure, to support all of the great response that we're getting. But we started very humbly, and we're really blessed that our chief engineer and the majority of our facilities team have been here since the museum was built, and we're actually part of building the museum. You know, we're only, at this point, thirteen years old. And so when we, were looking for a CMMS, we had just hit our ten year anniversary.

And it was obviously right around the COVID time. We realized we had had our same chief engineer for ten years.

And I kind of asked I was like, how are we going to do what we're doing? And then I knew our teams were already strapped. Right? They were already working at max capacity. Everybody was was running full speed.

How are we gonna accomplish what we're currently accomplishing when this when this building doubles in size and we have to bring on new people. And our chief engineer, bless him, was was ready for retirement.

I panicked. And I think the rest of our team kind of panicked when I started poking at that question because we had no system. We had pen and paper, and we had a lot of institutional knowledge sitting in people's heads. And that is a very scary thought when you're not only thinking of an aging workforce that has every single bit of information on your property inside their head, none of it's on paper, and then you're looking to double the size of your building.

So we were not prepared for for that transition at all, and I wanted to get us ahead of the curve. Didn't want us to panic once the the second half of the building was open. So it was really easy to sell that we needed something when we had nothing. And it wasn't a secret that our chief engineer was brilliant and knew every detail about our building and that losing him was gonna be an incredible loss, not to mention a huge, huge challenge. So the biggest scare was that loss of knowledge, that loss of historical data.

You You know, all of our employees weren't gonna be here forever, and so they're eventually gonna leave, retire, and their expertise is gonna go with them. So we panicked thinking about how are we gonna onboard new hires. And we needed to not be so dependent upon that pass down of personal knowledge one on one. We needed to be able to onboard people quickly and give them an ability to hit the ground running, not have to rely on, you know, weeks to months of individualized personal training. If we could put everything into a CMMS, then somebody could log in and not skip a beat with PMs and maintenance and records and knowing exactly where our systems were.

And that that was the selling point. Once we kind of outlined how a CMMS could fill those needs and serve that purpose, everybody was was instantly yes to the CMMS, and then it was just deciding which one fit us best.

That's great. We hear a lot about kind of that loss of tribal knowledge and the importance of having that live somewhere that it can be better relayed across the team.

I would love to hear from the Alagash team as well. How about you guys?

Yeah. I'll I'll start off with a little bit of kinda background. I'm kinda like Stephanie. We had, you know, just a a weird way of getting into the limbo system, but, like, for the last or the first ten years of my career here at Allagash is just basically double digit growth, breakneck speed, construction projects every year, just basically trying to hold on and and keep up with everything.

We had a an existing, CMMS system that I brought in very early on at Allegash back in two thousand thirteen or so, figuring that we just kinda grow with it, but, it just didn't get utilized very well, and we kind of knew that, and we we didn't really do anything about it. But, last couple of years, the the market kinda softened up a little bit. It allowed us to kinda slow down.

We made a change in management and brought Ryan on board as the maintenance manager. And Ryan, you know, doing what he need does best. Like, it was asking questions, and we were kinda refocusing and using the kinda slower or, like, using that time slower time to kind of, you know, refocus and use it as an opportunity to kinda go after unplanned work orders and start getting the PM program back to where it needs to be and getting the technicians back to more PM focused work orders rather than kind of the firefighting aspect of maintenance. And and Ryan and Ryan can jump in wherever he wants, we're just starting to look at the existing CMMS system, why we're not using it, and a lot of it was just it it was clunky.

It didn't have the right data in the right places. It wasn't easy to use. It wasn't fast for loading up on on mobile devices. And then we were also using various other, like, three or four other different pieces of software to kinda fill in other parts of it, like scheduling and, inventory control and, like, note taking.

I kinda just kinda decided to start looking around and see what's out there for a a more comprehensive system or this other CMMS, which, you know, obviously, became limble for us. What's it gonna get rid of? Get rid of software issues, gets rid of other software costs that are in a licensing costs, and then also just how the technicians like it. And and Ryan can speak to this.

That was probably the biggest selling point for Limble for us at the time was just when we started using it, the technicians wanted to use it, and that made everything else beyond that easy.

So and then Yeah. On the back end of not just justice. Is all the data that gives us, especially on my end, it's like just it ties into that. Data is easy to reference and to, basically consolidate with other data for financial systems, ERP, our inventory control systems, and and operational data as well. Having access to that data from a machine asset and maintenance network perspective just makes it so much more easier to tie into what the day to day, the week to week, and the annual, goings on at the company and the brewery are.

Yeah. And they're, like, you know and I don't know what Sean was saying. When I showed up, it was just my biggest takeaway was, like, everyone was frustrated in in the mechanics were frustrated. You know, operations was frustrated.

There was just a ton I think I think that frustration was because there there was a really strong team at Allagash. Like, the maintenance engineering team was really good, and they were really strong. And the operations team and the other departments that we work with were very strong as well.

And there was just nothing that was, like, working for them. So it was just everything was slow. Everything was hard to use. There was no data. Work orders were separate from parts. And, I think the unlock for me was really I I worked with Limble when I was first kinda, like, shopping CMMS systems and asked if we can go somewhere that someone was using it locally.

So we were able to go see, a manufacturing facility about two hours away and not beer. It was they were making, like, chemicals, you know, systems.

And just having two, mechanics go with me and just talk to their maintenance manager, talk to their techs, see how they were using it, seeing how it was working for them. I think that was, like, the big unlock of, like, it doesn't have to be this hard. It doesn't need to you can have something that supports you. I mean, I had that in my previous career and knew, you know, what that looked like or what that could be like.

But, you know, a lot of the team here has a long a lot of seniority, and they haven't really maybe necessarily worked other places in a manufacturing environment and know what a CMMS should be. So as soon as I brought them back and then they were talking to the other techs and that, you know, starts the creates this excitement of, like, hey. This change could be better. This change could be great for us.

Really, it was easy sell, and Sean was all on board with, you know, making an improvement.

So I think the other thing I'll say is that, you know, I've used a lot of, like, the bigger, CMMS systems like SAP, and I always wish that they were a little bit, more agile that you could do things simpler, like creating dashboards CMMS system, Because, again, if you're really, like, easier to use for the mechanics and it helps them do their job and it helps connect with other departments, then I I think that's, like, the huge win for, CMMS system.

Fantastic. This is so helpful. We've got some really great questions in the chat too, so I'm sure we'll circle back a little bit more around this topic.

Just to wrap up what we've got here, I think we've talked quite a bit about this from equipment to staff to technology, positioning maintenance as a value driver for the larger organization and really kind of redefining that cycle that we looked at in the beginning so that it can become a self perpetuating cycle in the positive. Right? Where, you know, executive decision makers see maintenance as a strategic partner and really invest in what the department needs and give you those resources you need. As a result, You track the ROI and impact of that reporting back to leadership and really showing that impact over time.

The leadership team sees the far reaching benefits of the new resources that they've budgeted for and you've advocated for. And, again, that encourages future buy in for additional resources, this cycle then continuing to repeat.

I think we've touched on this a bit, but kind of any closing thoughts here from the group on ways that you have continually over time leveraged your CMMS, leveraged your data, leveraged new resources that you have to really drive that perception of maintenance as a value adder to the larger organization across your leadership team and other departments as well.

So I wanted to bring up kind of some of the unique ways, actually, that I've started to implement using our the CMMS, even when I moved out of operations and into my current role with protection services. So similar to our facilities team and our trials and grounds teams who had no real way of tracking a lot of things, we had that same issue in our protection services team. And that team, is responsible for, you know, emergency responses, and we we fill all of the, first aid kits, all of our med bags. We check all of our fire extinguishers, our AEDs, and I'm sure you can see where I'm going with this.

We needed to track when we needed to check on those items, when they were last checked on, have a log and a record to prove, yes, all of our our stuff is up to date. We've got them, you you know, stashed everywhere because it's not just a building, two buildings really. We have a hundred and twenty acres of grounds and trails that also have items stashed around. And so we didn't have a good record of where everything is, how do you find it, what are some of the, the details around it, quantities that need to go in each of those first aid kits, what type of fire extinguishers are they when not just when are we checking them, their expiration dates, AEDs, the pads.

You know, everything always has nothing's nothing's clear where it's like, oh, everything expires at the same time. In a perfect world, that would be great, but we do not live in that world. So everything expires at different times or you've got different versions of things.

So I actually started using Limble for our protection services department to track some of those, other aspects that help us check on cost and keep us structured and organized. And I don't have to wonder, hey. Did my team do this on the day it was assigned? And we can customize that schedule to make sure, oh, okay.

Well, we're doing too much on this day of the week. Let's move this to a different day of the week. Or we were checking on the, the medical kit in the kitchen every month, but we need to do it every two weeks because they're really going through the burn dressing too quickly. And it it helped us track our assets so much more detailed in a completely different department.

So when you talk about value driver, don't just think of it, you know, quite so literally or in a linear aspect such as maintenance. There are very likely other departments within or other areas within your businesses, your companies, your buildings that could also use this because this is such a flexible system.

You can customize it in some crazy ways. We also don't have an incident management system right now, so I'm able to track all incidents when we're responding to any type of medical, whether it is somebody having a stroke or a heart attack on our property to a kid tripped and cut their cut their knee. I can take a picture of what they tripped on. I can take a picture of the ear area.

I can collect and track, you know, the information of the person. How long did it take? How much time are we spending responding to some of these issues? What part of the museum, am I seeing the most trip and falls, or are we seeing most of the people having heat stroke or heat related issues?

Are are we responding to them outside, or are they getting halfway through our galleries before they're realizing that they're having, like, a heat heat issue. So there's been some really unique ways that we've been able to leverage, the the value of this CMMS.

And I think that's been a really cool thing that not a lot of, users of Limble have been able to talk about. So I wanted to add that as a value a value driver.

Yeah. I'd like to jump on that. Like, we use Limble I it's getting your head away from the word maintenance is kinda key, I think. It's like, we actually use limbo on our business side IT, like, using the desk the the desktops, the laptops are all now assets or the your hourly Zoom movie assets in our limbo system so we can not just track the asset use and the asset cost, but also the labor associated when we cycle, shoot assets, or changing out monitors for whatever particular reason, even with sales reps and and business side IT functions, not just production floor or the facility. So that is just, like, something that to build on what Stephanie says is that don't think of it as just a maintenance, asset system. It's pretty all encompassing there.

You know, we see it as well on the on our inventory side for the engineering function too. And IT is that we just have better access track any we can track any sort of monetary use around that as well, including labor and the parts costs as Ryan can kind of build on.

Yeah. I think I too what what Sean's saying is, you know, we're we're actively promoting the wins we're getting when we find a win with, you know, spare parts. Or we used to source this spare part, and we, you know, have it in limbo as four hundred dollars a piece.

And because we knew that history, we were able to source it locally for the same specifications for a hundred dollars. So we're using that. And I think just being so organized, we can because it's so organized, then we can really, like, capitalize on that and put some energy and effort in that and stay focused and carry things to the end. And then that's where we're seeing the wins and then using that to, you know, celebrate that wins to everybody in the company so that you see that we are a a value driver, for the company.

You know, Sean, couple months back, we were looking to celebrate wins where we've saved money, and, you know, it was so easy for Sean and I to just come up with a list of them just out of limbo where we've saved money based on either reducing third party services and paying vendors to do work or saving in part cost because we found a better price and a better vendor. It was very easy. It didn't take us a week to put together all the data. It was literally an afternoon, and we had something good that you could share with the the executive team.

So I think that we had a very specific example of, we sourced a very expensive gasket from overseas.

We've done this job several times. And when it came in after investigating and, like, looking all the information in Limble, we found it was they basically sent us a wrong one that was nine thousand dollars versus one thousand dollars.

And because we had all the data and facts right there, we sent it to them, and they completely comped us all the cost for that. So that was also extremely helpful in in showing how much you can add value.

Have having access to good reliable data makes any positive or negative outliers come to the surface very, very quickly. And it's just kind of to wrap up Ryan's there, and that's what happened. We basically were just continually do it year after year. But, like, because we were able to view all the data in the same place over that asset, it quickly showed out we had one outlier going.

Like, I think you kinda questioned going, why are we spending nine thousand dollars on a gasket where but we could probably use just a gasket. Like, but then we look into it a little bit more, and Ryan was able to quickly find out it was the wrong one. And it saved us, like, if you said, like, eight grand, like, right up right then and there. And that's a lot of your limb will cost for the year right there in one gasket.

Alright. Well, we've got a ton of great questions coming in, so we'll start moving over to the q and a. Just some quick housekeeping.

We do have an ebook on getting the green light. So if anybody wants to check that out, the helpful resources button at the menu below your screen is where you can go to download that. Or over to the right, you can click to request a demo to speak one on one with a member of the team here to answer any questions that you've got.

And let's jump into q and a.

So we've got a lot of great questions. Again, anything that isn't answered, we're happy to follow-up with one on one after the webinar. But jumping in, you know, we have one question that came in here from someone that works at a heavily regulated biotech company. And they're curious in hearing from the Alagaj team how difficult the FDA or ATF makes maintenance management. And it'd be interesting to hear kind of anything around how do you manage compliance, over at Allagash?

Yes. Allagash is a little bit different because breweries are not under the same stipulation as, like, a true food, under the FDA. I I have had experience with that. I worked with a bottled water company before that. So I can speak to that and that experience. And having a good CMMS system is critical because all it's basically based on audits, and all those audits is data and facts. So they're gonna ask you how often have you maintained this piece of equipment, and where's the proof that shows that you maintain that piece of equipment.

So if you don't have a good CMMS system or if you have paper and pencil, it it could be a nightmare. So just having all of that stuff in a good organized CMMS system, having your assets identified as, like, product risk areas, just narrows the scope. So just I think I cannot I can't imagine being in an FDA site or manufacturing facility and not having, a good CMMS system. It must be a nightmare.

Like I said, Allagash, we're we're not under the same scrutiny, but I feel confident because we have it. If the if we were to come in audited on our you know, how we're maintaining our equipment, our critical, you know, critical equipment, it would be a dream because you're just gonna report print out a report. You're gonna show all the work orders we've completed with the labor attached to it and then any notes.

And then we could show critical spares of things that touch product product services.

So, yeah, I think having a system is absolutely critical, and the better the system is just gonna make your life easier in when you when you get audited, not if you get audited.

Great. Thank you.

Another question that we have here came in kind of when you were speaking to the legacy platform that Alagash had been using, and I think this kind of applies to the whole group. But this is a member of the audience here who is currently using a legacy CMMS that has been approved by IT across their global locations.

And the platform they're using today is not user friendly, it's not intuitive, and it's not really being adopted by the other sites. Their site has done a good job of of implementing it, but there's a lack of adoption at kind of at that larger level. And so they really understand the value for something that is easy to use and actually adopted by the team, but have a difficult time making the case to that larger global executive team of, like, rolling out a whole new level a whole new tool at that scale.

What kind of recommendations does the team here have for selling a solution like Limble or, you know, more user friendly CMMS to their larger global team and IT team?

I think the key feel kinda like what we're, facing is you've gotta you've gotta speak the language of the people asking the questions. And a lot of time, you know, the the details that are important to to you or me may not be the details that are important to the decision makers. So you have to figure out what that vital piece that is gonna that's gonna trigger, oh, that's important to me. What's gonna be relevant to them?

And lean into that. A lot of times, it it it needs to be dollars and cents. Right? And we all know that time is money.

Time for our team is money well spent.

So for us, we really especially for the app and you know, the maneuverability, being able to have Limble on on an iPad on your phone and be able to go to that piece of equipment, any piece of equipment anywhere on your campus and have everything you need at your fingertips saves so much time. No more rifling through manuals. No more trying to figure out, hey, how do I do this again? What's the detail for this again? Oh, what's the number for this part that I need to order?

All of that is in the app. You can order a part on the spot. You can complete your PM step by step, all of the details. You can assign it to the next person, alert your manager.

You you know everything about that. All the user manuals, literally at your fingertips. The amount of time that saves having all of that, whether you're connected to the Internet or not, which was a total game changer for us because we're a largely concrete building. So when you're in the maintenance bowels of our building, there is no Internet, and it didn't change the functionality of everything you had at your fingertips. So when you can equate that level of flexibility and the amount of time you are saving with reduced training time, by getting everything set up the right way and the flexibility for everybody on the team to see the same information.

That was what sold it for for our teams. And then because we are a campus and and we want growth opportunities, we want people, you know, to move up in in the ranks and and have new challenges, For them to understand, you can master one tool and then be able to apply that at any building you move to after after this, whether you start working at Crystal Bridges and you move to the medical school five years down the road, you don't have to learn a new system. We're using the same system across the campus, same functionalities.

Everything is still there. That was also a really big, big key difference for us. So figure out what is that important factor for the people making the decisions and lean into that factor even if maybe it's not the one that you personally see the most value in. Make sure the person making the decision sees that value in the way that's speak their work language is what I'm saying.

Great. Thank you so much, Stephanie. Anything, Ryan or Sean wanna add to that before we jump to the next one?

The app is as as Stephanie mentioned, the app and it's easy to use just makes setting everything else on top of that so much more easier. And the the one that I forgot about that was not having the access to the Internet because we have to say we have a pretty big campus where you can dip in and out of either Wi Fi coverage or into cellular, and it's it's seamless across that.

Great.

We probably have time for one more question here.

Can you talk a little bit more about how to improve user adoption?

So I think this is, like, an interesting question too as it relates to that implementation step in getting something approved. Right? We wanna make sure that it's successful. What has it looked like at Crystal Bridges at Allagash driving adoption across the team, getting the getting the the technicians bought in, and and really continuing to improve that adoption over time?

So it was it was a challenge for us.

You know, as I mentioned, we had had a long standing team who had their way of doing things. They they were like, we function perfectly fine right now. We know what we're doing. We get it all done. We communicate well. We don't need this.

And there there was a lot of pushback at first, like, a lot.

And it really took showing them that I I was the one pushing it. I'm the one you know, I got the approval, but I was the one launching this entire process. And I had to be like, guys, I'm here to help you. Let me show you how I I understand what you're working through. I understand these challenges, but I had to sell that vision of the future, how how it was gonna be more challenging. Sometimes I had to look them straight in the eye and be like, Jeff, you are not gonna be here forever.

How how are we gonna set the next person up to be just as successful as you are? You know? And when when you talked about that legacy planning, that really woke them up, but you also had to explain the value of their day to day for me to go, hey. Look.

You you have this manual. You can build out these tasks. How much time are you guys taking being like, okay. Well, you did these three steps, but you forgot this one.

You didn't do this. You know, you can build all these forms into it. How much paper do y'all have all over your desks right now? Can you pull up records for something three years ago and show me exactly the maintenance schedule?

I mean, I had to speak their language, the people using it. And then it was a lot of hands on training. It was a lot of working with them, talking and conversing and discussing with them, not at them, and helping them see the value. And, I I can't tell you enough how shockingly proud.

I mean, I was so proud. So, I I pick on Jeff because he was one of the ones that did not want to do this. He says, I don't need this. I'm fine.

But Jeff got promoted to the chief engineer of the medical school, And I laughed literally laughed out loud in a wonderful happy way when I learned he unabashedly was pushing Limble and and already getting Limble going for the medical school that's not even done being built yet. So it just showed that once you get them using it, and that's the other key, don't wait until it's built out perfectly to start using it. Start using it immediately, even if it's not perfect.

Because it's gonna take a while to build things out. It's gonna take a while to put all of your details, all your plans, all your PMs, all your instructions in there. Gonna take time. Don't wait to start using it. Have them start tracking and using it now, and you'll build it out as you go. I think if we had just waited until it was perfect, we never would have launched.

Yeah. I think it what Stephanie is saying too is just I think the implementation and the adoption are closely tied together. Really, when when we implemented this at Allagash, I took it upon myself to build a very strong asset structure, like a a very organized, understandable, structure of how we would look, but it wasn't perfect.

And at the same time, we rolled out area ownership. So mechanics are responsible and own certain areas of the brewery. So then the push was, you know, make this your own. Make this so that you can use it. Make it how you want the assets to look in your area.

And then the more information you put into it, it's just gonna benefit you. You put in all your PMs or you associate parts of those assets, the next time you do it, it's already there, and it's just gonna help you. I think anytime that we were, you know, talking about using Limble and leaning into it, it was the discussion was around how much it was gonna benefit them. Like, in two years, when you do this task again, you won't have to do all this work because it will already be in the system, and you're literally just pulling up that old work order and going to right to the storeroom to get the direct parts you need.

And all those notes that you went and added about, hey. I had to heat the bearing up to get it off, and all those things are gonna help you tremendously the next time you do the job. So it's self serving. So it was provide the structure, provide, like, a a good framework for them to understand, you know, how we wanted it to look and then our kind of, like, asset structure rules and then making it make it themselves.

That's really what Ali Ash did to really drive that adoption.

Fantastic. Well, thank you everyone so much. I know we're at time here, but very grateful for our speakers here and for everybody that participated. We're gonna send out the recording after this.

We do have a brief survey to help inform our future webinars, make them work harder for you, and we just really appreciate everybody's time here today. This was this is really fantastic. I've learned a lot. I hope everybody on the call feels the same way.

Thanks for the call.

Guys. We appreciate it.

Thank you.

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