How BHS optimized its Maintenance Management

Eye on Failure is a series of maintenance stories about professionals who implemented our solution eliminated failures and unpredicted downtime in machines. To know other cases, such as Embraer and AmstedMaxion, visit our blog. 

The largest provider of solutions for the corrugated cardboard industry, BHS Corrugated has led the market in the manufacture of corrugators and corrugating rolls for more than 50 years. The German multinational company is present in more than 20 countries and has around 1,600 employees — among them is Stephan Cavalcanti.

Current Maintenance Supervisor at BHS Corrugated South America, Cavalcanti started working in the industry in 2008, at a company that provided services for Petrobras. He was responsible for quality control, monitoring and support for field instruments and equipment installed at the oil company.

Despite already being in the industry, Stephan’s path only crossed with maintenance in 2017, when a colleague who worked at BHS called him to join the team. Five years later, he is responsible for all electrical, electronic, and building maintenance for the multinational’s Latin American unit.

The Maintenance Supervisor has a lot of responsibilities, so Cavalcanti always insisted on organizing the activities as best he could in an attempt to keep Work Orders and machines under control. But the method he adopted was not always enough.

“Before TRACTIAN, everything was very archaic, there was no maintenance system. I used to set up the entire factory’s annual schedule using Trello, created the preventive and corrective maintenance cards, and the cards for each machine. It was a manual and very tiring process, but still better than Excel spreadsheets.”

What Is TRACTIAN and How Does it Help Your Maintenance Management?

Besides the lack of a functional management software, BHS’ maintenance also suffered from the absence of a real predictive strategy. Far from performing online monitoring on the assets, the team at most had some periodic, well-spaced and always manual data collection.

Predictive Maintenance: Online or Offline? Discover the pros and cons of asset condition monitoring methods.

The scenario changed when the industrial plant manager got to know TRACTIAN’s predictive system through a referral. It didn’t take long for them to arrange a meeting with the sales team and start the partnership.

As of September 2021, BHS Corrugated South America has 30 Smart Trac sensors to monitor its most critical assets associated with TRACTIAN’s TracOS™ CMMS software.

TRACTIAN named in the Capterra Ranking for emerging favorite CMMS and OEE Software

Total control of Work Orders

“Things really came full circle with the arrival of TracOS™ and Work Order management, which is what I use the most today. Of course I also keep an eye on the assets, if they are working properly — and the real-time insights are great for that — but the automation and organization part of the WO’s is helping me a lot. This is what makes me able to put the house in order.”

The supervisor found in TracOS™ everything he was looking for in a maintenance system — and banned Trello forever. “I took all the scheduling I had in Trello and went about putting it into TracOS™ to have everything there. Today, our monthly maintenance meeting is all based on the TRACTIAN App. Everything we do is there,” says Stephan.

For him, the team’s routine has changed 100% with greater control of Work Orders. As the demands appear, he creates the WO in the app and assigns them to those responsible. Throughout the processes, the supervisor monitors the progress of the activities by exchanging messages with the collaborators through the comments field. 

Check out our complete guide to Work Orders in maintenance

“This way we communicate and solve things together. Everything is faster and more automatic, the dynamic is much more interactive. And now we even have a complete history that helps us solve problems faster, since they are almost always occurrences that have already happened before.”

Integration that avoids losses

The fact that Work Order management is integrated with 24-hour online monitoring, forming a complete and unified predictive system, ensures that the BHS maintenance team not only detects failures in advance, but also solves them easily, without having to stop the operation.

An example of this is what happened in late January 2022 at the plant. Stephan was returning from lunch when he received a wear insight identified in the pulley of an irreplaceable lathe, the most critical asset in the operation.

The moment he received the alert, Stephan rushed to the asset and saw that the case was indeed serious, which was intensified by the fact that the equipment was very old and robust. 

Even so, by identifying the fault long before it could harm the operation, it was possible to solve the problem without much damage. With the help of the platform, the team discovered that the issue was with the equipment’s pulleys and belts, which were replaced with new parts.

Find out why the future of industries depends on Prescriptive Maintenance

Totally in change of the maintenance routine

Cavalcanti says that, with TRACTIAN, he now has control over his assets and activities in a way he never imagined possible before.

TRACTIAN was named one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the world

“Today I can keep up with 100% of what is happening in the factory. I saw a change in the vibration of the machine on the platform and I went to talk to the operator, told him that I had received the alert, and when we got close to the engine, we saw that there really was a misalignment. In other words, I was able to predict something that not even the machine operator had seen yet, and probably would not see.”

Another great advantage of the system, according to Stephan, is that it allows the team to do preventive work based exactly on the number of hours the machine has been working. 

Thus, instead of defining random component changes every one or two months, the team performs interventions with more precision, replacing components only when it is actually time to do so. And this automated planning, which saves time and industry resources, is only possible thanks to the combination of CMMS and intelligent sensors.

TRACTIAN is ranked as one of the 3 best maintenance softwares in the world

This integration, according to Stephan, not only allowed for saving of thousands of dollars in the first few months, but also provides, every day, an easier and more efficient routine for the BHS maintenance team, which can now count on precise data, graphs, histories, real-time communication, plans, procedures, and a technology that really doesn’t let any sign of failure go unnoticed.

Would you also like to see this transformation in your industry’s day-to-day maintenance? Join the BHS Corrugated team and talk to our experts to find out how TRACTIAN’s predictive system can boost your asset management results.