Mobility Work CMMS through the eyes of an administrator

Saint-Gobain has been one of Mobility Work's flagship customers for several years now. Saint-Gobain Crystals is a supplier of technical materials for various sectors: geophysics, industry, health, safety, aerospace, etc. They use maintenance management software Mobility Work for over three years now.

Erik Stanison, maintenance manager, was a driving force in the adoption and use of Mobility Work at the Saint-Gobain Crystals site in Hiram, Ohio, in the United States. As an administrator of its network, his main responsibilities include the management of preventive maintenance, the assignment of tasks, the creation of equipment but also the training of new users in the software.

“What are the maintenance issues specific to your sector and your activity?

At the Saint-Gobain Crystals site in Hiram, we mainly use Mobility Work CMMS to track maintenance time and costs: we want to know how much time our technicians spend repairing equipment, and what equipment maintenance requires. For example, if we own a machine worth $10,000 dollars and we spend 200 hours and $5,000 a year on it, that may mean it's time to invest in new equipment.

How did you manage your maintenance before you started using Mobility Work?

I joined this site eight years ago, and I witnessed two different maintenance management software before adopting Mobility Work, which we started using because we were constantly having problems with our old CMMS: it did not exactly meet our expectations, and had difficulty performing basic maintenance tasks.

CMMS dashboard: example of counters

What led you to adopt Mobility Work?

Jonathan Bennett, Business Systems Analyst at Saint-Gobain Crystals Hiram, was tasked with finding us a new software to manage our maintenance. He came across Mobility Work CMMS, tested it and then presented it to Thomas Dassatti, site maintenance supervisor, and to myself.

Are you in contact with other Saint-Gobain factories thanks to Mobility Work?

Absolutely. For example, I know that the Saint-Gobain Crystals site in Milford, Connecticut, started using it shortly after us. We talked several times about how each of us uses CMMS: they track their data a little differently.

How did the adoption of Mobility Work happen? How long did it take?

In my opinion, it went very well. I did not participate in the transition from our last CMMS to Mobility Work (importing all our equipment lists from the old tool to the new one, for example), however, I spoke with Jonathan Bennett about this and I know that everything went smoothly.

For a few months, we used both systems simultaneously, including while we were transferring data from one system to the other. That way we were able to go back and check if anything was missing.

Given your experience, how does our CMMS meet your needs?

I love this tool, I think it's great! It is a good CMMS that offers us a range of functionalities, which we continue to discover and learn about as we use it. It's by far the best system I've ever used.

What features do you use the most?

Here, at the Saint-Gobain Crystals site in Hiram, I am probably the person who uses CMMS the most because I am responsible for entering data, creating equipment and tasks. As an administrator, I mostly use the dashboard and maintenance plans. Thanks to the dashboard, I can extract all the data that interests me: how many hours each technician spent on the equipment, the associated costs, etc. On a daily basis, our maintenance technicians mainly use the calendar.

Mobility Work CMMS on the mobile application

We also recently discovered that the mobile application includes a speech-to-text function: you can record yourself and the application returns what you say. This is a considerable time saver, especially for maintenance teams. Another time saver is the possibility of easily adding photos of an intervention and loading them into the CMMS.

With Mobility Work my technicians are also a bit more autonomous: some equipment that is part of our preventive maintenance must be replaced every quarter. Thanks to CMMS, and in particular to equipment labels, our maintenance technicians only have to click on the equipment to see which parts are linked to it. They then have all the information they need (part number, supplier, cost, etc.) and don't need me to order the missing parts, they can do it themselves.

What is your relationship with our teams?

Each time I have a question, I click on the small help button at the bottom right of the application. Mobility Work always answers very quickly, considering the time difference between the United States and France: I never wait long, I always get an answer within 24 hours. Also, as an administrator, I get emails when something is going to happen in the application, when a new update is available, or when the tool has a problem, it's really nice.

Some things have changed since we put the system in place. However, when I asked questions about it, the answers I got were always more than satisfactory.

“The main advantage of Mobility Work is its user-friendliness. It's by far the best system I've ever used.”

Are there features that you would like to see on Mobility Work that you are missing today?

The ability to send an email to a person when they are assigned to a preventive maintenance task and when it occurs. In fact, it's not so much for our maintenance technicians, but rather for the people in the company who don't use Mobility Work every day. For example, if I'm creating a task for someone, I'd like to be able to email them that they've been assigned to a new task. That way, he wouldn't have to open Mobility Work every day to check his notification tab. However, I already talked to the Mobility Work team about it, and they told me that they were already looking into this issue.

Apart from that, I can't think of any other features that we might be missing today. I think that the features offered to date are more than enough, especially considering the price!

Do you have ongoing projects with Mobility Work?

I need to organize a few training sessions for new users and refresher courses for old users.”

We thank Erik Stanison from Saint-Gobain Crystals for his testimony!