About the Customer
A mid-sized pharmaceutical manufacturer operating four large plants with over 6,000 critical equipment assets. The company manages 120+ technicians and 15 supervisors who generate 400 weekly work orders (70:30 preventive to corrective), maintaining stringent regulatory compliance standards.
Business Scenario
Twenty-four months after implementing SAP EAM, the manufacturer launched a process improvement initiative to optimize system usage, eliminate manual workarounds, and increase maintenance efficiency.
Challenges
Despite having SAP EAM implemented, legacy practices persisted, causing inefficiencies, compliance gaps, and limited visibility into maintenance operations.
- Reactive Maintenance Dominance – High corrective maintenance effort with no Root Cause Analysis (RCA) for critical breakdowns and poor defect classifications preventing proactive problem-solving.
- Disconnected Spare Parts Management – Parts not reserved against work orders caused frequent stockouts during repairs and overstock situations that increased inventory costs.
- Manual Compliance Processes – Customer-specific validations performed outside the system created audit risks and compliance gaps in the regulated pharmaceutical environment.
- Delayed Work Order Closure – Untimely work order closures limited management visibility into actual maintenance costs, asset performance, and resource utilization.
Solution
Maventic executed a two-phase process improvement program to streamline workflows, enforce system-based operations, and enhance visibility across all four plants.
- Phase 1: Process Configuration
- Defect Management Enhancement – Implemented notification workflows capturing actual field defects and Why-Why analysis for structured Root Cause Analysis.
- Integrated Spare Parts Workflow – Enabled direct spare parts reservation and consumption from work orders with tighter MM-PM integration for accurate spend tracking.
- Financial Integration – Configured PM-FI integration capturing planned and actual costs per work order for complete equipment cost visibility.
- Compliance Process Setup – Established calibration and refurbishment processes with PM-QM integration aligned with pharmaceutical standards.
- Phase 2: Digitalization
- Planning Board Deployment – Implemented planning board for efficient maintenance scheduling and resource allocation.
- Asset Analytics Rollout – Deployed dashboards for real-time KPI monitoring and management decision support.
- Mobile Technician Access – Enabled offline mobile capability for paperless field work execution and improved data accuracy.
Business Impact
- Improved Asset Utilization – Real-time performance visibility enabled better equipment management across plants
- 30% Cost Reduction – Preventive maintenance shift significantly reduced emergency repairs and production disruptions.
- Optimized Inventory – Integrated tracking reduced carrying costs and eliminated spare parts stockouts.
- Enhanced Compliance – Automated reporting and system-based validations improved audit readiness.
