This global potato processor runs highly automated plants around the clock, supplying french fries, hash browns, and formed-potato products to fast-food chains, restaurants, distributors, and retail. Production pauses only for scheduled equipment sanitation every three weeks, which makes every hour of that turnaround, and every hour of unplanned downtime, expensive. Initial analysis at all three plants found a complete void of maintenance work planning, no oversight of outside contractors’ costs and activities, and no coordination between maintenance and parts management.

The dysfunction was structural, not personal. No work outside the sanitation period was planned, scheduled, or assigned, so skilled onsite mechanics existed mainly for emergencies; when equipment broke, contractors were called instead. Mechanics cherry-picked the work orders they wanted and disappeared for hours rather than tackling higher-priority jobs, building a backlog that fed downtime. Overtime ran on an open checkbook with no visibility into dollars spent or hours used, and the 36-hour sanitation window had no orchestration: maintenance staff could not see when an area would be ready, so they showed up and hoped, while startups slipped progressively later into runtime.

Leadership did not need a one-time cleanup. It needed a system that could plan and sequence the turnaround, put idle mechanic capacity to work on the right jobs, bring contractor and overtime spend under control, and keep parts available when both equipment and people were ready, then keep running that way after POWERS left.

POWERS started with the turnaround. The team measured how long it took to clean each piece of equipment and area, sequenced the cleaning tasks by priority, and built a sanitation preparation schedule that tightly orchestrates production, maintenance, and sanitation as one plan. Laying out the critical path exposed pockets of time when maintenance could enter each area and identified activities that could run concurrently, so sanitation could see and flex around planned maintenance rather than block it.

In parallel, POWERS rebuilt mechanic accountability and brought spend under control. Every mechanic documented on a pocket card how they spent each minute, which revealed the 35% utilization rate; a Daily Schedule Control then showed each person’s available hours, allotted a full day of open work orders, and let supervisors track progress through companion assignment cards. A new daily and weekly operating report and shop display boards put KPIs in front of every shop and the whole department. Contractor and overtime use moved behind upfront justification and approval, with authorized contractors required on an approved list to pass security. The parts-kitting process was flowcharted, roles were realigned and trained, and each supervisor gained a planner who orders parts and schedules work for when both parts and equipment are available.

Tying it together, POWERS implemented a Maintenance Management Operating System that equips the departments to plan, assign, execute, follow up, report on, and review work. The cumulative effect was a maintenance organization that schedules its own day, sees its own performance, and orchestrates the turnaround instead of reacting to it.