When sustainability and maintenance reach a higher level
About Plastix
When you take a trip down the Danish west coast, you will come across the town of Lemvig. Here, locals have been fishing for centuries, but the town also houses some innovative companies. Plastix is a clean-tech production company which makes Green Plastic magic by converting used fishing nets into plastic granules, which are used among others for furniture production. With a vision of having a sustainable product and growing demand for Green Plastic, Plastix needs a thorough inventory overview and a stable production capacity that can handle the future demand.
Maintenance across departments
Plastix has an eco-friendly agenda and a goal of having a production capacity of a least 36,000 tons of green Plastic per year in Denmark. With such an ambitious goal, Plastix need to optimize their internal processes. Some of the challenges that needed to be optimized were seamless shift change between colleagues and better planning of the daily maintenance tasks.
Plastix knew that to reach their goal, they need to handle the internal data and create a structured overview of their spare parts inventory. But having a digital system wasn’t enough – it had to be user-friendly too. Plastix needed to make sure that new team members quickly could become part of the team and their mission.
Martin Jacobsen, Maintenance Manager:
“Due to growth, we needed a new tool to plan and structure maintenance. The implementation of INEXTIA has created a big advantage in our daily work in connection with our production lines, which in the end means that we can avoid unnecessary downtime.”
Internal overview strengthens the team
But how do you do that? The overall solution has been to digitalize the processes both for the maintenance of the production lines and the input of data. Therefore, Plastix has set up their production lines in zones based on color codes. In this way, everyone on the team always has a complete overview of where in production the maintenance task is located. Maintenance manager, Martin Jacobsen says “Even night and weekend shifts find it easy to use even though they are pretty much alone when working. It creates less doubt about the handling of maintenance tasks.”
The INEXTIA Stock App has revolutionized the way Plastix manage their inventory in a much easier and more efficient way. On the component, they can see which spare parts are needed and with the help of QR codes, which can be scanned quickly, take it out of the warehouse. The Stock Management module also contains information on the supplier, previous prices, and number of items ordered. This makes it easier to re-order spare parts next time, when all the information is gathered in one place.
Analytics reports
Plastix has been working with building data in the INEXTIA system for almost two years now. During this time, they have gained valuable insights and established a strong foundation for internal knowledge sharing. With help from monthly Analytics reports, Plastix can easily identify which 10 components are causing the most errors. With this information they can take proactive steps to prevent downtime and increase efficiency by focusing on the maintenance of these top components.
Once a week, an automatic report is sent to the entire team, so they can see which tasks were performed the previous week. With everyone having access to the same information, the team at Plastix knows what to do the upcoming week.
Martin Jacobsen: “Once you have tried making the first 3-4 Analytics reports, it quickly becomes an easy part of the internal reporting and knowledge sharing, across departments.”
An Analytics report is created at the same time when a component is replaced on the machines, ensuring that nothing is removed from the machine that should be preserved. At the same time, the information is stored in history, so they can calculate when the component should be replaced next time.
The setup of zones and the good practices of data input have contributed to Plastix having the total overview they wanted. They have also engaged the team in both the maintenance system and the app.
5 Quick facts about INEXTIA:
- Quick response from the project manager and support.
- Overview of data history in Analytics.
- Individual customization of modules to match our routines, not the other way around.
- Easy involvement of colleagues outside of the maintenance team.
- Flexible system for easy addition of new procedures.
