CMD Gears is a Swiss Army knife for maintenance

The Mobility Work application is a CMMS solution created to facilitate and optimize maintenance management by putting the latest technological advances at its service. However, its user-centered design and its extensive functionalities for sharing information appeal beyond maintenance services.

The combined testimonies of Laurent Lefebvre and Geoffroy Topart, both working at CMD Gears (the French leader in mechanical power transmission), perfectly illustrate this “exceeding of functions”. While the adoption of Mobility Work by the former, maintenance manager, seems to be a matter of course, its use by the latter, who is responsible for spare parts, is less expected. Their feedback is therefore instructive in order to understand how a Next generation CMMS can be useful beyond the only maintenance management.

Optimizing maintenance management with a new generation CMMS

The primary role of a CMMS software is to make maintenance management as easy and efficient as possible. From this point of view, Mobility Work offers numerous advantages compared to a traditional solution.

The shortcomings of a classic CMMS

Before adopting Mobility Work, the CMD Gears maintenance department used traditional maintenance software, “a GMAO that could be described as classic.” When Laurent Lefebvre became maintenance manager of the CMD Cambrai site, 3 years ago, he found a GMAO “poorly exploited, not really up to date in terms of equipment”, maintenance plans “not at all managed” and faulty spare parts management. As for requests for intervention, he notes that there are “about 800 open”, and that it is impossible to know if they have been processed or not. His observation: “a GMAO very poorly used.”

The situation described by Laurent is symbolic of the shortcomings of conventional CMMS: heavy to use, complicated to understand by maintenance teams, they tend to be misused and their use gradually abandoned over time. So much so that in the eyes of Laurent, in terms of CMMS, “before there was not much”.

The advantages of a new generation CMMS

Mobility Work software is different from the old ones CMMS solutions in a number of ways.

An express handling

Like most maintenance managers, Laurent Lefebvre was a bit apprehensive about the change in CMMS software. But “everything went well, because we had good explanations and even getting started is easy and fast. Afterwards, the team had to follow up but after 10 minutes of explanation, everything went very well. And the tool is also quite user-friendly.”

Information sharing and ease of use

When starting to use Mobility Work in his factory, the first change that Laurent noticed was the sharing of information. “It's very easy to access and you don't need to be trained for 3 days to just go and read a report, it's quite easy.”

This ease of access to Mobility Work is noted by a large number of users of the application. By quickly gaining the support of teams, it allows the full and complete use of the GMAO, where traditional solutions are, as we have seen, all too often neglected.

Features that have become essential

Laurent Lefebvre also highlights the importance of certain functionalities. For him, task creation and reports have thus become essential to his work. This is the case, more generally, of “the management of interventions, purchase requests, all the daily monitoring of maintenance”.

As for the mobile version of the application, he uses it from time to time “to follow a bit of network news”. While the web version is the most used by technicians, “the mobile aspect is interesting for adding photos to tasks for example”.

More than just a CMMS

Following the adoption of Mobility Work by a company's maintenance teams, we often see that other services are seduced by the advantages of the application, and are starting to use it themselves.

Cross-cutting use

Like Laurent, Geoffroy Topart works at CMD Gears. But he is a spare parts business manager, and based at the company's head office. So how did he come to use Mobility Work?

“It was during a presentation of Mobility Work for maintenance that we discovered the application and understood that it had an interest in serving our customers, a strong desire of the general management of the CIF group to which CMD belongs.” He then explains: “we use Mobility Work above all to provide a customer maintenance support service, an after-sales service, which assists in the installation of new reducers and new machines, for maintenance or for advice. The aim is to have a “digital health record” for each reducer we manufacture.”

He even intends to extend the use of the application to other services: “At the moment there are only fifteen of us using the application, in the long term it will be all the sales department, the after-sales service and the design office.”

A CMMS at the service of traceability

The idea of using a CMMS software outside of maintenance management itself may seem incongruous. But Geoffroy Topart explains to us what prompted CMD to adopt Mobility Work: “we had been working on devices for years, without having an application or system that would have allowed us to track all the interventions we had made, the sales of spare parts and even the maintenance operations carried out remotely. Everything was stored in different folders, even paper, and you had to find all that.”

In terms of archiving and access to data, and therefore traceability, the method had serious shortcomings: “it is certain that at the beginning our method caused loss of information and we could not have real traceability.”

From this point of view, the implementation of the application within the after-sales service was therefore a small revolution: “we use Mobility Work to gather all this data and allow everyone, in a few clicks, to access all the important information about the life of a gearbox for our customers.”

Sharing information at the service of projects

For his part, Laurent Lefebvre has also started using the application outside of maintenance management itself. “For some time now, it has been used for projects. When you have a slightly specific one, you create a “project” equipment, this allows you to reference an entire history. For example, I work a lot with an industrialization project manager. We thus gain in visibility and all stakeholders benefit from it.”

Useful qualities for various uses

If the Mobility Work application is attractive beyond its initial role of maintenance management, it is because it provides its users with relevant functions while being very easy to use.

A very fast implementation

Unlike many professional software, and in particular conventional CMMS, Mobility Work is easy to set up. Laurent Lefebvre thus took about three months to deploy the solution and to make it fully functional for his maintenance department, but specifies that “for an average user, getting started is done in 10 minutes.” Geoffroy Topart “immediately saw the value of the tool”. Users at CMD have easily adapted to the new tool.

Flexibility and mobility

One of the qualities of the application that won the support of the business manager is its great flexibility: “We can shape our network as we want and build it in our image to ensure that the GMAO adapts to our business.”

In addition, the application is as accessible in mobile version as on a computer: each user can use it from any connected device. A significant asset for Geoffroy: soon “all technicians will be able to travel around the world and use Mobility Work”.

He also highlights labels, “which are ultimately filters that allow us to search very quickly” for information or a machine. A feature that, once mastered, quickly became essential in his eyes because it allows “to find everything very quickly: you have to think carefully before starting to record but once the big ideas are there, creating the labels and then using them is very easy”.

A human and responsive support service

Finally, the support offered by Mobility Work is supported by all users of the application. “I am in regular contact with the support team, and I am very satisfied”, explains Geoffroy Topart. “The feedback is given very very quickly, and then the answers are quite clear. I am even surprised that it works so well.” The business manager sees a significant difference with “more standard CMMS”, with which “you can wait for hours before getting an answer”. He thus appreciates the “human dimension” of Mobility Work.

An opinion shared by Laurent Lefebvre: “As soon as I need it, I can easily get in touch with the support team, which is very responsive. I always get very quick feedback and that is very appreciated.”

The adoption of the Mobility Work application by the CMD Gears maintenance manager therefore appealed beyond his service. Geoffroy Topart and Laurent Lefebvre thus have “two really different uses”, which however agree on some points.

These testimonies, far from being isolated, show the importance of adopting an innovative, efficient tool adapted to the new challenges of the industry.