Case Studies - Boots Company

“There is always a balance to be struck between ease of maintenance and initial capital cost.”

The vast network of Boots stores in the UK is supplied through its central warehousing sites in Nottingham, which have an average daily throughput of £20 million of stock equating to about 4000 cubic meters of goods. The goods are then dispatched to 17 regional centers for distribution to the stores. The management of engineering support for this entire warehousing network is based in Nottingham, and over the last seven years, the company has implemented a maintenance strategy, which, within two years of initiation, reached world-class status.

At the heart of this maintenance strategy sits the computerized maintenance management system Maximo, and a help desk, which, caters to all central and regional ease of maintenance sites. All planned and demand maintenance is scheduled on Maximo, and the results of that maintenance are fed back into the system.

When setting up the system the maintenance engineers had some tough policy decisions to make, which balanced effectiveness against cost to achieve the best result. They chose to condition monitor selectively, to maintain critical pieces of equipment, and perhaps not maintain other non-critical or disposable pieces.

Some plant and equipment is maintained on a timed basis, for example at 6 or 12 monthly intervals, or it is maintained on “hours run.” When breakdowns occur, an operator calls the help desk, information is logged into Maximo, an escalation procedure is put in place, and work orders are scheduled to the engineers or contractors.

Another facet of the maintenance strategy is to standardize equipment and design resilience into it. For example, when similar types of control systems are used for different pieces of machinery, a single manufacturer is used, meaning spare parts and technical training will be common to them all.

“But,” says Richard Singleton, logistics engineering manager at Boots, “there is always a balance to be struck between ease of maintenance and initial capital cost.” Similarly when new machinery is being designed resilience is built into the system. So if one piece of equipment could bring the whole warehouse to a standstill if it fails, they would consider the viability of putting in two. If that is not viable from a capital investment viewpoint, then they may use predictive maintenance as well as planned preventive maintenance to minimize downtime.

This maintenance strategy is continually being updated, and there are several new developments. Some new computer controlled automated systems have been linked directly into Maximo, bypassing the help desk. The company has also upgraded most of its engineers and tradesmen to multi-skilled status. The benefits of this strategy are impressive. The initial cost of implementing Maximo was recovered in the first year. Savings have been accruing since then, and now stand in excess of £1.5 million, with a marked increase in efficiency and productivity. For example, the fleet off forklift trucks have been reduced from over 500 to about 300, improving availability while performing the same workload.

Two AMIS audits have been undertaken. The first, in June 1995, put Boots in the world-class category with an overall rating of 79%. It also provided valuable information to feedback into strategy development for further improvements. The second, in October 1998, gave an overall rating of 83%, retaining the world-class status and placing Boots Logistics Engineering in the top 15% of over 700 UK companies audited with the facilities sector average rating being 49% the overall industry average of 45%.