UX Series 18: what CMMS at L'Oréal?

As part of this new user testimonial, we were able to talk to Matthieu Droulers, Performance Manager at L'Oréal, who agreed to answer our questions. Employed by the group for eight years, he spoke about the deployment of Mobility Work next-generation CMMS in his factory.

This leading brand in the cosmetics industry has the stated ambition to meet all the needs of its customers by offering a very complete range of products for its various targets. The factory where our interview took place is specialized in the manufacture and packaging of perfumes.

Mobility Work: Can you introduce yourself?

My name is Matthieu Droulers, I am 31 years old and I have been working for the L'Oréal group for eight years now. I am now in charge of performance in my factory, which specializes in the manufacture of perfumes.

How did you find out about Mobility Work CMMS? What convinced you to try the solution?

We discovered Mobility Work in a fairly simple way, since we were contacted by email by a member of the team, who explained to us what the tool consisted of and the functionalities it offered. Already at that time, our software at the time was quite archaic and no longer corresponded to the digital world around us, so we wanted to see it evolve. We were indeed looking for a more modern solution, but had not started any active research due to a lack of knowledge of the solutions available on the market.

This email piqued our curiosity and we therefore scheduled a demonstration of the tool with one of your sales representatives. Given all the features presented and the use that could be made of them, we were convinced and decided to try the application.

Is the Mobility Work tool already in place in your company?

Among the many factories in L'Oréal, mine is in fact the pilot plant for the deployment of CMMS. It was in September 2017 that we first presented the tool to industrial maintenance technicians to offer them to use it, and above all, to share their impressions with us. Over the following three months, all the teams were able to familiarize themselves with CMMS and thus tell us the advantages and disadvantages observed. So we've actually been using the solution for a year and a half.

“To facilitate the adoption of the software, we wanted to equip each maintenance technician with a smartphone: the application's simple and intuitive user interface facilitated the integration of the tool.”

The first few months were particularly successful as the technicians were satisfied with the product, so we made the decision to officially deploy Mobility Work and use it daily starting on January 1, 2018. We did not encounter any particular difficulties, although some people who may be less comfortable with technology might be expected to step back. On the contrary, they found their bearings very quickly. To facilitate the adoption of the software, we wanted to equip each maintenance technician with a smartphone: the simple and intuitive user interface of the application facilitated the integration of the tool.

What do you think are the advantages of this community platform?

I see three main advantages to this solution. First, the software is available with simple access to the internet so it is a total break with the one we used before, which, I repeat, was obsolete and out of step with what exists today. We are in the digital age, and the tools that surround us greatly simplify access to information. For example, when technicians needed to find the history of an intervention carried out on a machine, they had to go through notebooks to find what they were looking for: needless to say that we could lose a lot of time. In comparison, Mobility Work is a connected tool that gives us access to the information we are looking for in a few clicks.

“We really appreciate the concept of community put forward by Mobility Work CMMS, it gives us a glimpse of great prospects! ”

In a second step, I will talk about the mobile aspect of CMMS. We use it almost all the time from smartphones since technicians have to work on machines and production lines and don't have time to go back and forth to the office to enter data on a fixed station. This is an essential aspect for us since we avoid trips and therefore save time.

Finally, we really like the concept of community put forward by Mobility Work. While the software needs to be further explored on our side, it already gives us a glimpse of great prospects. This point is obviously an obvious advantage for a group like ours, which has numerous factories spread across France and the rest of the world. Thanks to the community aspect, we can benefit from each other's best practices to, for example, observe the behavior of teams from another factory in the group with the same equipment. Because even before thinking of observing the best practices and solutions provided by other Mobility Work client companies, we are well aware of the interest of the community and the sharing that this CMMS encourages.

What is the feature that you use the most and that you can't live without?

Technicians use QR codes on a daily basis, all of which have been installed on our machines to be able to identify them. They only have to scan them to access, in a few seconds, all the history of operations carried out on the machines they are interested in. Again, this feature perfectly illustrates the access to information that Mobility Work allows, since teams quickly find all the data they need if they encounter a failure.

To take a concrete example, if a cylinder is broken, the industrial maintenance technician searches for all the interventions carried out by his colleagues in connection with cylinder breakages in his application. In short, it is a real diagnostic aid solution that has therefore become essential in our factory.

Therefore, we use the analytical tool very regularly. Technicians have the possibility to access it by themselves and we are responsible for sharing the trends observed through a PDCA, which is still in the test phase today. Our objective is to bring together all the technicians every week to look at the reports of the past week and identify the most problematic equipment in terms of breakdowns, technical interventions, etc. Thanks to the analytical tool, we are in a position to target and especially to prioritize our actions according to the failures that have the most impact on our productivity.

Find an analytics tool in Mobility Work to analyze all your maintenance data and adapt your strategy

Are you satisfied with the responsiveness of our team?

In terms of the change requests we are making, we would like to go even further on a few points. We have had to discuss some topics that have not yet been able to come to light.

At the same time, we are satisfied with the online support available in the CMMS! This is a very useful feature that allows us to get quick and effective responses every time.

What are L'Oréal's future plans regarding the solution?

We intend to work on two main areas of development. In my factory itself, we are currently in the process of bringing CMMS to other departments. For example, the quality laboratory is in the process of becoming familiar with the tool for managing the entire metrology part, which must be carried out very regularly on the equipment. By next year, we want to simultaneously integrate all our spare parts into the application in order to monitor them optimally.

Beyond these two points, we note that other factories in the group are gradually migrating to Mobility Work, so that we communicate every week with the teams on site to take stock and compare our respective needs, identify best practices or even monitor the deployment of the software.

User feedback is at the heart of our approach, and helps us improve our product on a daily basis. If you want to optimize your industrial maintenance and save money, do not hesitate to schedule a demo or try the app for free !