The quest to find out why manufacturing and maintenance software sucks

In this episode, we're joined by Ryan Robinson, the shop manager at a wholesale tree grower. We discuss the agony of dealing with paper records, what it's like to modernize maintenance with machines that are decades old, how he keeps his team motivated, and his secret to saving hundreds of labor hours. 

Three experts sit down to get to the bottom of why so many of the software systems designed for manufacturing and maintenance teams just don't work and how to avoid falling into a tech nightmare.

Maintenance teams do a lot of great things. But what happens when no one hears about it? The answer: Nothing good. When maintenance teams don’t measure their success and promote their wins, it leads to everything from low morale to layoffs as the budget gets sliced and diced. How do you stop this from happening? Show the impact of maintenance. But how do you do that? And what if no one cares? We talked to three Fiixers to answer these questions.

We talk with Chris Stevens, Operations Administrator at Carolina Solar Services, about his experience using mobile devices to manage maintenance and tips for doing it successfully.

Leading change ain’t easy. This is especially true when it comes to getting people to use new technology. Statistics show that almost three-quarters of IT projects fail and the numbers are even worse in maintenance, where 90% of CMMS failures happen because the software was underutilized or not used at all. That’s why we invited water resource manager and project management professional, Devon Aaroe, and wastewater treatment operator, Gordon Mielke, to share their experience of taking their maintenance team from paper to digital.