How AmBev Reduced Maintenance Repair Time by 80% with Mobile EAM

Operational efficiency is crucial in the capital-intensive beverage production industry that thrives on 24-hour operations. Therefore, equipment downtime directly translates to significant financial loss.

Legacy System Inefficiencies

AmBev, a subsidiary of one of the world’s largest brewing companies, faced similar operational challenges due to its maintenance processes. Although the company utilized SAP’s Plant Maintenance (PM) module, its benefits were not fully realized on the plant floor due to several limiting factors that included:

• Paper-Based Workflow: Maintenance operations for over 4,000 employees were heavily reliant on paper, generating approximately seven million pages annually for work orders and procedures.
• Delayed Data Entry: Technicians lacked direct access to SAP PM during their shifts necessitating spending up to two hours post-shift on administrative tasks, attempting to recall and manually enter operational data.
• Information Gaps: The reliance on manual notes and verbal handovers between shifts resulted in poor data quality and incomplete information transfer, compromising the effectiveness of subsequent maintenance activities.
• Previous Technology Gaps: An earlier attempt to develop a custom, in-house mobile solution had proven unsuccessful, becoming unstable and outdated over time.

Integrated Mobile EAM

To resolve these issues, AmBev implemented Sigga’s Mobile EAM solution. AmBev selected the technology for its ability to integrate seamlessly with AmBev’s existing SAP PM system, providing high-speed, real-time data synchronization between the central server and technicians’ handheld devices. This integration’s new, streamlined workflow provides:

1. Real-Time Data Capture: Technicians can log all relevant data, tasks, and measurements directly into the system from their mobile devices as work is done.
2. Technician Empowerment: The solution enables frontline technicians to create work orders and reserve parts on the fly in response to urgent notifications for routine requests.
3. Instant Access to Documentation: All necessary procedures, manuals, and work order details are accessible directly on the mobile devices, eliminating the need to retrieve printed documents.

Quantifiable Business Outcomes

The initiative resulted in an 80% reduction in mean time to repair (MTTR), decreasing the recovery period from 24 days to five. The deployment of Sigga’s Mobile EAM solution also yielded other significant and measurable improvements like:

• Improved Asset Reliability: Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) increased by 10%, indicating that equipment became more reliable.
• Increased Productivity: Technician productivity saw a 15% gain, as administrative time was converted into active repair and maintenance time.
• Enhanced Data Accuracy: Real-time data entry eliminated recall errors and improved the quality of information available for future planning and analysis.

By closing the gap between on-floor activities and their SAP EAM system, Sigga transformed AmBev’s maintenance function into a more proactive, data-driven, and productive operation.

What This Means for SAPinsiders

The bad data problem is a major barrier to proactive maintenance. Poor data quality is a critical issue for SAP users. For SAP PM, this manifests as incomplete work orders, inaccurate Bills of Materials (BOMs), and flawed asset histories. SAP partners like Sigga create a foundation of trustworthy data and directly address the root cause of bad data by capturing it at source and equipping technicians with an intuitive mobile app that syncs directly with the SAP system.

Mobility is mandatory for reducing downtime costs. The cost of unplanned downtime is staggering and continues to rise, costing large manufacturers an average of $253 million per plant annually. A key contributor is the lag time between identifying an issue, creating a work order in SAP, and dispatching a technician with the right information and parts. A mobile EAM closes this time to action gap. This mobilization of the SAP PM workflow is critical to slashing Mean Time to Repair (MTTR).

Future-proofing SAP investment requires empowered technicians. As SAP pushes its customer base towards SAP S/4HANA and a clean core, the focus is on leveraging AI, machine learning, and predictive analytics. However, these advanced technologies are only as good as the data they are fed. Furthermore, with a global shortage of skilled maintenance technicians, maximizing the efficiency of the existing workforce is a business imperative. Sigga acts as a vital bridge to these future-state goals.