Maintaining a Century-Long Reputation for the World's Largest Cereal Mill

For more than 100 years, Quaker Oats has been an icon in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Encompassing more than 45 acres and 1.9 million square feet under roof, the Cedar Rapids plant is the largest cereal mill in the world. Every day, more than 800 personnel across three shifts representing four different unions produce ready-to-eat oatmeal and grits as well as Aunt Jemima syrup. The mill also makes grains to supply sister Quaker Oats plants.

Growth-Fueled Advances

Maintaining the production and facility equipment for a plant of this magnitude was a formidable challenge when the task was handled manually. Because of continued company growth, Quaker realized it would be nearly impossible and cost-prohibitive to continue a manual maintenance and materials management process. At the corporate level, an inventory tracking system had been in place and proved beneficial until business growth and technology merged at the crossroads of innovation and fiscal responsibility. Quaker knew that change was required in order to properly manage growth and sustain competitiveness. Attention was directed to the mill level for tracking and managing materials related primarily to the storeroom.

To address the situation, Quaker embarked on a quest to find a system for the storeroom function and purchasing department. A team comprised mainly of information systems (IS) personnel chose CHAMPS software as the solution for their needs. The original system from the late 1970s was DOS-based until Quaker upgraded to a Windows environment several years later. Once the CHAMPS system was implemented, the Quaker IS department took responsibility for maintaining the application.

In the early 1990s, the company expanded their use of the system by implementing the maintenance management functionality of CHAMPS. This included all work order and equipment management functionality. "We had a system that was doing a great job of helping us manage our storeroom and purchasing areas," states Judy Mittan, Facilities Maintenance Planner for Quaker Oats. "When we added the functionality for maintenance management, we were able to gain immediate control of cost information and other important data."

During this time, Mittan assumed responsibility as the CHAMPS administrator in addition to her responsibilities of planning and scheduling — a role she continues in today, which has included more than half of her 35 years with the company. Because Quaker has 160 craft personnel with an average of 15 years of tenure supporting three operational shifts, implementation was handled internally. This gave long-time employees a comfort level transitioning from a manual process to automation. The internal team successfully interfaced CHAMPS with the existing Quaker accounts payable system, allowing seamless transfer of financial data between the maintenance and accounting departments.

Comprehensive Maintenance Management

The CHAMPS system has blossomed within the maintenance department and materials areas of the mill. The system handles all aspects of work order management — from initiation, planning, and scheduling to execution, tracking, and completion. Approximately 200 work orders are generated each week, ranging from planned and preventive to emergency situations. The majority are initiated directly by production personnel who enter work orders from terminals located near the production lines. Whether a problem will halt production and delay deliveries dictates whether the work order is entered as a breakdown or a planned job classified as "in-planning state." For those in-planning work orders, maintenance planners use CHAMPS to review jobs and plan the number of craft, skill types, and parts required.

Once materials are available, maintenance supervisors review the backlog list and schedule based on work order priorities and production line downtime. The supervisor uses the CHAMPS scheduling module to schedule all work orders and assign craft personnel. Printed schedules allow craft to easily see their assigned jobs, and production personnel receive copies as notification of work to be performed in their area.

After jobs are completed, craft personnel record the hours expended on each work order. These hours are entered into CHAMPS and balanced against time card punches for tracking and accountability. Planners then review finished jobs and close out work orders in CHAMPS. Once a preset number of days have elapsed, completed work orders are moved to history and all labor and material costs are rolled up to the associated equipment.

Preventive maintenance (PM) work orders are run within CHAMPS as batch jobs. Each PM work order has a detailed job plan stored in CHAMPS, including attachments with additional details. As with other work orders, all associated costs are rolled up to the equipment once the PM work order is completed and closed out.

Component-Level Equipment Management

Critical plant production equipment — including compressors, ovens, conveyors, elevators, blowers, and motors — is fully maintained within CHAMPS. All repairs are tracked within the system, which includes a hierarchy breakdown of the parent/child relationship down to the component level. This enables maintenance personnel to quickly see the component relationship to equipment at any level, with complete repair and cost history for those components and the primary equipment asset.

Labor costing information is tied back to specific work orders and the equipment where jobs were performed. CHAMPS captures a complete history on all repairs including labor and materials. Graphical illustrations in the form of charts and graphs are available within the system for tracking spending histories. All time of maintenance personnel — whether equipment-related or not — is tracked within CHAMPS to provide data for future planning and budgeting.

Performance Improvement

Before implementing the maintenance management system, Quaker was challenged in confidently gathering maintenance data and intelligence for analysis. Now, through built-in reports, the system generates numerous data, cost, and performance reports for management review. These include open work order reports showing what work needs to be performed and daily inventory reports summarizing storeroom transactions. Other reports generated by CHAMPS include equipment cost reports and weekly reports for labor costs, storeroom issues, materials receipts, and schedules.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are tracked for schedule adherence, percentage breakdown, and several other performance areas. KPI and related data is routinely extracted from the system and analyzed for cost and budgeting purposes. Over the years, Quaker has realized dramatic improvements to the way they manage maintenance — specifically, planning and scheduling has become far more effective using CHAMPS versus the previous manual process.

Reliable and Functionally Rich

Over the years, the CHAMPS system has become an essential tool for managing the maintenance function at Quaker. A recent upgrade brought new functionality for work order management, preventive maintenance, equipment management, scheduling, materials management, and improved administrative functions. As a result, Quaker is able to streamline the activities of maintenance supervisors and planners while expediting their procurement process.

"We understand the value of having a reliable and functionally rich maintenance system," states Mittan. "CHAMPS is fully integrated with our cost and financial systems and provides the solution we need for managing equipment data, preventive maintenance, project tracking and purchasing. We consider our relationship with the CHAMPS personnel as a partnership. We have every intention of growing with the system."

Materials Management Control

Benefits have been realized not only in maintenance, but in materials management savings as well. The CHAMPS system has become a critical tool for managing more than 20,000 stock keeping units (SKUs). Each Quaker SKU is set up with a min/max level to control spares inventory. CHAMPS automatically creates a purchase request for these SKUs when reorder levels are reached. Purchase requests for contracts, repair parts, services, and more are all created in CHAMPS and transferred to purchase orders within the system, which automatically faxes them to vendors. This enables Quaker storeroom personnel to fully manage costs and usage of spares required for maintenance jobs, eliminating the problems related to stock-outs and excessive inventory.

Everyone agrees that CHAMPS will continue to play a key role in Quaker's long-standing reputation for producing some of the world's most popular brands — and that breakfast tables throughout America will continue to be filled with quality products that millions of people have relied on to start their day for over 100 years.