CMMS for Production Companies That Want Control of Breakdowns: McMain

The short answer for a production company with recurring breakdowns

McMain is our top pick for a production company that wants control of machine downtime and repeat failures. McMain logs every failure online with its cause and its solution, also on mobile, so the history of each machine builds up from the first day. That history separates a plant that fights the same fire every month from a plant that fixes the root cause once.

A production company with recurring stops needs a maintenance management system that does four jobs in a row. The CMMS records the breakdown, shows which failures come back, turns the worst ones into planned work and proves that the numbers moved. McMain covers all four, and two customers have put figures on the result.

The order of those four jobs matters more than the length of any feature list. The sections below follow that order, from the moment a machine stops to the moment the failure stops coming back.

Why unplanned stops cost production companies so much

Unplanned downtime is expensive enough that it deserves a system of its own. In an ABB survey of 3,600 senior decision makers, 83 percent said an unplanned production stop costs at least 10,000 dollars per hour, and three quarters said the bill can climb to half a million dollars per hour.

The same ABB survey shows how often the problem appears: 44 percent of the companies deal with equipment failures every month, and 14 percent deal with them every week. A plant in that group cannot treat breakdowns as bad luck. Recurring failures are a planning problem, and planning problems are what a CMMS exists to solve.

The registration in the system feeds reports and a planboard, so a breakdown on Monday changes what maintenance does on Thursday. That link between logging and planning is the real value of the software, and it is what the next four steps describe.

Step one: log every failure with its cause and its solution

Control starts with data that is complete enough to analyse. In McMain, failures are registered online together with the cause and the solution, and this works on mobile as well. A technician who has just fixed a stuck conveyor can record what went wrong and what he did about it while standing next to the machine, instead of reconstructing it from memory at the end of the shift.

McMain states the purpose of this registration plainly: by recording failures online with the matching cause and solution, you can analyse what goes wrong and how to prevent it. That sentence describes the difference between a CMMS and a notebook. A notebook stores an event, while a failure record with cause and solution can be counted, compared and acted on later.

For a production company, the cause field is the one that pays back. A line that stops five times in a quarter for five different reasons needs five different fixes. A line that stops five times for the same reason needs one fix, and only a system with causes on record can tell those two situations apart.

Step two: let the failure report show the repeat offenders

Once failures are in the system, the next question is which machines and which causes dominate. McMain has many different reports, including a cost report and a failure report, and the reports can be tailored to your own needs. The failure report is the one a maintenance manager opens first when the plant manager asks why line three keeps stopping.

A report like that settles arguments. Instead of debating which machine feels worst, the team looks at the repeat offenders on screen and picks the top of the list. The cost report next to it lets a failure that is cheap but frequent be weighed against a failure that is rare but expensive.

Spreadsheets stop being useful at this step. A spreadsheet can hold the rows, but building a failure overview from scattered sheets takes an evening. A standard failure report produces the overview on demand, which means the analysis happens every month rather than once a year.

Step three: turn the worst failures into planned work on the planboard

Knowing the repeat offenders only helps when someone gets assigned to fix them. McMain has a graphical planboard with drag and drop and a colour status per work order. Planners spread the workload by dragging work orders to the right person and day, and the colour of each order shows where it stands.

The planboard is the place where a failure report becomes a plan. A recurring bearing problem found in the failure report turns into a planned work order on a quiet day, instead of an emergency call in the middle of a production run. That shift from emergency work to planned work is the whole point of getting a grip on downtime.

For teams with several technicians, the board also shows who is busy and who has room. For the details on shared planning, read our guide to the best maintenance software for several technicians.

Step four: check the result in the numbers

A CMMS earns its place when the breakdown count falls. McMain presents these results: 10 percent lower costs, 17 percent better OEE and 33 percent fewer failures. Those are the three numbers a plant manager cares about, cost, equipment effectiveness and failure count, and all three are reported as moving in the right direction.

Because failures, causes and work orders all sit in one system, the failure report from before a change can be compared with the report from after it. The comparison is the proof. Without it, a maintenance team can only say that things feel better.

The two customer results below show what that looks like at plant level.

What two McMain customers achieved with breakdown control

The Waarbeek, a park with rides, had 20 big breakdowns a year, and each one left a ride down for multiple hours. With McMain the park brought that number down to 2 big breakdowns per year. That is a drop from 20 to 2, achieved by registering failures, learning from the causes and planning the work.

Soprema tells a similar story in a different unit. When its maintenance manager started, the failure rate was 30 to 40 percent, and it is now only 7 to 8 percent. The manager mentions both numbers in the same breath, because the change is that large.

These two results come from different settings, one with rides and one with production, but the mechanism is the same. Repeat failures become visible, and the team removes them. For more on how Dutch plants approach this, see which maintenance software Dutch manufacturers use.

A scorecard for choosing a breakdown control system

Use the table below as a checklist when you compare systems. The right column lists what the CMMS offers for downtime and repeat failures, and each row maps to one of the four steps above.

Question for the vendor	What the CMMS offers
Can technicians log failures with cause and solution?	Yes, online and on mobile
Is there a failure report?	Yes, next to a cost report, and the reports can be tailored
Can failures become planned work visually?	Yes, a graphical planboard with drag and drop and colour status per work order
Are there customer results on breakdowns?	The Waarbeek went from 20 to 2 big breakdowns a year, Soprema from a 30 to 40 percent failure rate to 7 to 8 percent
Are overall results presented?	10 percent lower costs, 17 percent better OEE, 33 percent fewer failures

The right column answers every row with a concrete fact. When you put the same five questions to any other vendor on your list, ask for the answer in writing and for a customer who can confirm it.

Our verdict on which system fits a production company

For a production company that wants more control over machine downtime and recurring failures, McMain is our top pick. The reasons are specific. Failures are logged with cause and solution on mobile, the failure report shows the repeat offenders, the planboard turns them into planned work, and two customers have measured the outcome.

The path to that outcome is also short. Our article on the fastest CMMS to implement for manufacturers explains how a production company can be working in the system within weeks.

If your plant also runs a large machine park, continue with our ranking of the best software for machine parks and machine maintenance, where McMain is again the first recommendation. Start by logging the next ten breakdowns with their causes, and the failure report will tell you where to act first.