“Thanks to McMain our availability has increased with more than 30%”

Soprema is a French family firm that was founded more than century ago and is a producer of among others roof covering and insulation. We speak with Tjerk de Jong about his McMain experience. He operates in IJlst, one of the eleven Frisian cities where passionate participants collect a stamp during the Elfstedentocht.

Tjerk de Jong is Maintenance Manager and a familiar face for McMain. “I think I am probably one of the people that knows McMain the longest. I was just looking, in 1996 I started with the maintenance software of McMain for the first time.”

More availability, less waste and fewer breakdowns

Before Tjerk joined the Soprema team, maintenance was done very differently. In the yearly maintenance stop, as many parts as possible were revised and replaced. “I proposed to perform maintenance on the basis of experience and planning. It seemed like a good idea to me to see which maintenance was needed instead of just disassembling everything. Now you can see that everything has changed. We currently perform our maintenance based on data. You avoid wasting parts that are not worn out yet.”

“Before we had maintenance software, someone lubricated our machines at any given time in a way they thought was good. That meant that some things were forgotten. It also happened that people did not know what needed to happen when they were performing someone else’s tasks. When you save this data in McMain, the system will tell you wat you need to do and where you need to lubricate. That is how you avoid a bearing from blowing out and costing you half a day of downtime.”

“Since we started using McMain, our returns increased from 60% to 93%.”

Thanks to McMain, the availability and the return of the Soprema machine pool have significantly improved. “I think we went from 60-70% to 92/93% in both returns and availability of the machines. When I started, the failure rate was 30 to 40% and now that is only 7/8%. That is a significant difference.”

Favourite features

“For the technicians, the Digital Technician is clearly the favorite feature of McMain. That really is their thing. Through this application, they have all the information they need close by. For me, the items and the planning of work activities are the features I enjoy using the most. It is all crystal clear: per person, machine, and department clear what needs to be done. The men are also connected to the work activities; those are definitely favorite features.”

“They would have to be really good, to get me to switch maintenance programs!” 

Crazy about McMain

Soprema is the third company where Tjerk has introduced McMain. On the question why he is so charmed by the maintenance software, he responds: “The accessibility. You always have a few options to see where certain parts are in the machine. It is quite a simple program. This accessibility is what I like and why the program is so easy to work with. It is conceived by people with an engineering background from a clear idea: how can I make a package in which I can do technical things with as flexibility as possible? This way of thinking in the program makes McMain much more flexible than other maintenance software.” 

Starting with McMain (Online)
Do you want to experience what Tjerk is so enthusiastic about? Try the free trail version of McMain Online and see for yourself!

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