Global leader in medical technology chooses SIMCO’s CERDAAC to digitize calibration and maintenance processes and save $3M annually
A global leader in medical technology recently undertook an important company-wide initiative to digitize processes to drive cost savings and improve process efficiencies.
The Senior Manager of Facilities Engineering needed a new system to digitize the company’s test equipment calibration and preventive maintenance processes across the company’s multiple global sites. After evaluating the different alternatives on the market, his team chose SIMCO’s CERDAAC to meet the challenge.
The Challenge: A Hodgepodge of Systems and Processes
As the company grew in the past, each of the different manufacturing sites developed different systems and processes to manage equipment calibration, preventive maintenance, and repair. Some were using different calibration and maintenance management software applications, some were using spreadsheets, and some simply relied on paper documentation to track which equipment needed calibration or maintenance, when it was serviced, and whether it was found to be in or out of tolerance. “There was a real hodgepodge and all the sites had different ways of managing calibration and preventive maintenance. We wanted to consolidate, compare all of them, pick the best one, and go with it.” says the manager.
The company faced numerous challenges that limited its ability to efficiently manage its calibration and preventive maintenance processes, including:
- Multiple siloed systems: Each site had its own systems, making it difficult to integrate and manage applications across sites.
- Inconsistent processes: Each site had its own processes, making it difficult to report and manage across sites.
- Insufficient reporting: Executives needed access to high-level information about calibration and PM processes.
- Limited audit support: It was difficult to locate and provide the necessary documentation for quality audits.
- No visibility across sites: The variety of systems and processes made it impossible to have a global view of key quality metrics.
- Unnecessary IT burden: Each department and site was responsible for purchasing and maintaining its own IT systems.
- Expensive to maintain: The system required a high number of people hours to track and service equipment, and to respond to audits.
System Requirements
The manager was tasked with finding and implementing a system that would automate, streamline, and reduce the costs of the current approach by digitizing and standardizing information, systems, and processes across multiple global manufacturing sites. Key goals for the new solution included:
- Improved quality and regulatory compliance
- Ability to enforce consistent process execution across all sites
- Ensure audit success with a robust, validated system
- Streamlined operations
- Eliminate the efforts spent installing, validating, and maintaining multiple systems
- Drive operational efficiency with a highly automated system
- Global visibility
- Provide executive level dashboards for tracking high level metrics at a glance
- Ability to quickly drill down into details on any asset or service
Evaluation Process
The company first looked at its existing systems to see if it could find a good internal solution already in use. In addition to the existing variety of calibration and preventive maintenance systems and processes, the company was already using SAP’s enterprise software for its controls, so the company first looked to see if it could use that application to manage calibration and repair as well. “We found that SAP was okay for preventive maintenance, but they were not strong in calibration,” says the manager.
SIMCO presented the business case for its CERDAAC solution to demonstrate that, beyond simply digitizing processes, the software provided real cost savings and efficiencies that would have a significant impact on the company’s bottom line. After a rigorous evaluation, one solution stood out.
“We selected CERDAAC to manage both our calibration and preventive maintenance services across all of our sites. The nice thing is that CERDAAC works both for calibration and for preventive maintenance, because in a lot of departments those processes are combined. CERDAAC’s combination of capabilities and cost savings made the business case for us,” the manager confirms.
