How CAREL Standardized Maintenance Across Plants with Maintenance Connection

The Company

CAREL is one of the main global manufacturers of control solutions for air conditioning, cooling and heating, and air quality improvement systems. Founded in Italy in 1973 for the construction of electrical cabinets, the company soon expanded its offerings, producing electrical components for HVAC (Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning) that allow users to better control conditioning systems. 

Starting in the 1990s, the company expanded through various new plants, acquisitions, and branches. Today, CAREL offers components, electric panels, inverters, and valves for the control of cooling gases. 

The Challenge

Before implementing a dedicated CMMS solution across locations and plants, CAREL faced opportunities for improvement, including: 

• Limited transparency and visibility across sites, resulting in less standardized maintenance plans 

• Maintenance schedules that could be further optimized to align with actual machine operations 

• The potential to enhance analytics for more efficient maintenance cost management 

• Opportunities to improve inventory management for greater efficiency 

The Solution

CAREL’s modernization efforts are largely shaped and driven by the technologies they utilize. In 2023, they adopted Maintenance Connection CMMS (Computerized Maintenance Management System) to organize and improve the efficiency of their maintenance systems through a Group vision.  

After a thorough evaluation and selection of possible partners, Maintenance Connection was chosen as the most suitable solution for the company. Then, a multi-disciplinary team devoted to the software implementation was created in conjunction with One Team and Accruent.  

CAREL, supported by One Team, developed the first pilot project to implement the setup of the software in its headquarters, subsequently exporting the same model to six other factories.. In seven months, the system was set up and operationalized in seven plants total, including more than four thousand assets and over five hundred maintenance plans, with local translation for each plant. 

The Results

There are many key benefits that the Maintenance Connection implementation has delivered to CAREL:  

• Transparency across sites: CAREL works with twin machines and requires that processes are replicated across plant locations Maintenance Connection provides crucial visibility of the process on a Group level, standardizing maintenance plans across all production sites.  

• Improving maintenance schedules: Additionally, the integration between Maintenance Connection’s functionalities and the MES used in the factories has begun. This, in the medium-to-long term, will improve the organization of activities, help preventive maintenance and decrease machine failures and downtimes, ultimately optimizing efficiency. 

• Lower maintenance costs: Thanks to this integration and the data and insight analysis offered by Maintenance Connection, maintenance costs will progressively decrease. 
• Spare parts optimization: CAREL has a significant number of production plants located on different continents using similar parts. Maintenance Connection helps the organization optimize the management of these spare parts, allowing teams to share them between plants and purchase only the necessary quantities.
   

Looking Ahead  

As of today, CAREL is working on adding spare parts management and skill matrices functionalities. 

Another important objective for the future is the application of Artificial Intelligence to improve the management of information derived from manuals and data observed in the field. This will optimize the maintenance process and help effectively manage potential failures.  

One of the main benefits of the implementation is the visibility of the process at the Group level, thanks to maintenance plans standardized across all production sites.”

-Franco Faletti, Group Production Engineering Manager, and Alberto Mazzetto, TPM Leader, spoke with us about the implementation process of the CMMS at the company.