Case study 2 min read
A global industrial machinery manufacturer
$1.2M saved a year with predictive maintenance and a multi-plant ERP
A machinery maker was losing $1.8M a year to machines stopping without warning and three plants that could not see each other. We put all three plants on one ERP and gave them warning before things broke.
- Industry
- Manufacturing
- Services
- Custom software development, Legacy modernization
- Timeline
- Results measured within six months
Introduction
The vision: one ERP for three plants, and warning before things break
This manufacturer builds machinery for construction, mining and agriculture. It runs three plants, serves 1,200+ B2B clients and turns over $350M+ a year.
The aim was simple to say and hard to do: one ERP holding orders, stock, jobs and suppliers in one place instead of five, put in without stopping a single shift, with warning before a machine fails instead of a scramble after it stops.
The challenge
All of that ran on five fragmented legacy tools, and nothing was joined up.
- A machine ran until it stopped, then everybody dropped what they were doing: around 12 hours of unplanned downtime a month and $1.8M in annual losses
- Orders were tracked by hand, so a customer asking where their machine had got to meant somebody walking the floor to find out
- Suppliers were judged on memory and goodwill rather than a record
- Each plant kept its own numbers, so any question that crossed a site boundary turned into a round of phone calls
- Head office had three plants and nobody with the whole picture
The business needed one ERP across all three plants, put in without stopping a single shift.
Our approach
The machines came from several different makers, and each reported in its own way. We got them all feeding one model first. And we made sure the floor wanted to use the new software, which is the part most projects skip.
Warning before a breakdown
Small sensors on the machines report how hard they are working, and the software flags a likely failure 10 to 14 days ahead so the repair can be booked in.
One order book
Every job scheduled, tracked and dispatched in one place, with alerts when something is about to be late rather than after it already is.
A supplier panel
Scores who actually delivers on time, tracks what is due in, and raises the routine purchase orders on its own.
All three plants on the same numbers
Head office can see spare capacity at one site and work stacking up at another.
The results
Three plants now run on one ERP with warning before a machine fails. Maintenance went from firefighting to planned work, and the savings showed up on the bottom line within two quarters.
-72%
unplanned downtime
$1.2M
saved each year
98%
order fulfilment accuracy
-65%
supplier delays
Technology used
A quick look at what runs behind this build.
| Technology |
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| What we did |
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| Runs today |
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