Leading NZ-based brewer, DB Breweries, has continued its extensive business change program with a successful implementation of SAP Work Manager, giving its engineers the ability to carry out plant maintenance duties on location.
DB Breweries is one of New Zealand’s leading brewers and cider companies with brewers across New Zealand in Auckland, Mangatainoka, Timaru, Greymouth and a cidery in the Moutere Valley, Nelson.
Employing over 500 staff, DB is well-known for its product innovation and leadership in marketplace and celebrated in 85th anniversary in 2014.
Partnering with its SAP systems integrator, UXC Oxygen, DB Breweries has over the last three years rolled out an ambitious program of change underpinned by leading IT technologies to optimise sales activity and customer service effectiveness. Following the successful implementation and roll-out of the SAP Retail Execution (REx) app and additional complementary mobile applications, SAP Work Manager was the next logical step as part of the wider strategy to mobilise its workforce subscription.
Business challenge
- Paper-based distribution of work orders was slowing down asset maintenance routines
- Faster reaction to failures and more efficient on-the-job routines needed to reduce overhead burden
- Enable engineers to improve first-time fix rates and conduct more preventative maintenance in the field
DB Breweries information systems manager, Mike Rawson, says the company wanted to continue to capitalise on its SAP investment, replacing paper-driven, highly manual asset maintenance processes with easy to use mobile apps.
“Excessive time was being consumed by our engineers managing the communications of breakdowns, recording plant defects, and researching historical plant data. Time was being wasted in trips from their desktop PCs to the asset and back again. We wanted to remove those inefficiencies,” Rawson says.
The solution
- Implement SAP Work Manager to automate plant maintenance routines
- Give engineers remote access to mobile notifications, plant settings and historical details of plant equipment
- Deliver app on Apple iPads giving engineers easy, intuitive access to complete their assigned work orders and service requests
UXC Oxygen helped DB Breweries deploy SAP Work Manager on Apple iPads, giving the engineers a custom view of DB’s existing enterprise plant maintenance system. Regardless of connectivity, it enables remote employees to manage their assigned work orders and service requests via their iPads, and gives them access to key data including operations, task lists, repair histories and material availability.
Return on investment
- Improving efficiency in installing, inspecting, maintaining and repairing assets in the field
- Timely access to key documentation speeds up plant maintenance activities
- Less training and easier onboarding of new engineers thanks to intuitive iPad app functionality
Armed with more information DB’s engineers are working smarter on-the-job, improving first time fix rates, and extending asset lives by conducting more on-site preventative maintenance.
“SAP Work Manager on the iPad is easy to pick up and learn as it has an extremely good interface. With the information at their fingertips, efficiency is improving because the engineers get the job done right, first time,” says Rawson.
He says the app puts the engineers at arm’s length from the core SAP system, which is important as it means they don’t need to be trained in SAP language.
“The implementation went extremely smoothly and we are now fielding requests from engineers to add more functionality to the app, so they can extend their ability to carry out more duties away from their desk.”
Thanks to UXC Oxygen for preparing this case study. Want to receive more articles about SAP in ANZ? Sign up to receive our weekly newsletter as a free General Admission member here.