Lear Corporation, the Fortune 500 global supplier of automotive seating and electrical power management systems, has announced that it will be using Mainsaver in its production facilities at Gravatai in Brazil and Buenos Aires in Argentina.

The two Lear factories supply the giant General Motors (GM) corporation – the Brazilian site is directly adjacent to a GM assembly plant – and the “just-in-time” nature of the supply arrangement means that maximising production uptime is essential. The implementation of Mainsaver will help to ensure that critical preventative and corrective maintenance work is carried out according to schedule and with optimum efficiency.

Another long-term Mainsaver customer, SITA UK has commissioned a further addition to its network of Mainsaver installations to include the new-build energy-from-waste plant at Haverton Hill on Teesside. The new facility, which has just marked the first anniversary of its construction phase, is expected to process over 250,000 tonnes of domestic waste per annum, converting it into around 20 MW of electricity.

As with the other SITA EfW plants in which it is installed, Mainsaver’s role will be to help manage, plan and schedule the complex and demanding maintenance programme required to ensure that waste processing is not interrupted by machine failure. Production downtime is expensive both environmentally and financially in such operations - domestic waste that is unable to be processed must be sent to landfill, with fines imposed in such eventualities.

SITA UK is part of Suez Environnement, one of world’s leading water and waste management service providers, which has a £100bn turnover, 62,000 employees and a presence on five continents.

At its production site in Sheffield this month, Mottram’s multi-disciplinary select team - comprising production, engineering and health & safety personnel - has already undergone detailed training on the core Maintenance, Materials and SpidexWM modules.

The next stage will be the creation of a comprehensive preventative maintenance schedule using Mainsaver. This is expected to enable more effective preparation, planning and scheduling of planned maintenance works as well as providing a detailed maintenance audit trail, an essential requirement for mandatory inspection by trade and government bodies.

Mainsaver was selected by Sims F E Mottram on the basis of its successful history enabling best-practice maintenance and asset management across the full spectrum of industrial environments.

Spidex Managing Director Jonathan Starling commented "Mainsaver CMMS has an enviable, proven track record in the recycling industry, so we are looking forward to another successful project with our newest customer Sims F E Mottram."

Mottram's parent company Sims Metal Management - the world's largest metals recycler - also uses Mainsaver in its US operations. Australian-owned Sims is a global organisation which operates from over 260 locations across 5 continents and which employs around 6500 people. Sims’ operations encompass purchasing, processing and selling of ferrous and non-ferrous recycled metals.

This latest version of Spidex's web-based work management module for Mainsaver CMMS has benefited from dozens of enhancements, among them the ability for users to carry out ad-hoc risk assessments before commencing a maintenance task and the ability to create “post-job” checklists. Useability in the module has been further improved by the addition of a sizeable number of new viewers together with Google-style indexed text searching functionality to enable quick and easy lookup of (for example) asset, spares and work order information.

SpidexWM 2.2 operates alongside Mainsaver 11.6 on both SQL and Oracle database platforms and in Firefox and Internet Explorer browsers. Full release notes for the module can be obtained in the Resource Library at http://www.spidexsoftware.co.uk/customers (login required).

Spidex Managing Director Jonathan Starling commented: "This is another significant stage in the evolution of SpidexWM, serving to demonstrate our ongoing commitment to delivering exciting new products to the expanding and thriving community of CMMS users in the UK and Ireland."

The new release is available to all supported SpidexWM customers immediately. Mainsaver users not currently benefiting from SpidexWM within their CMMS installation can arrange a demonstration of the module by contacting Spidex on 0844 324 9190.

Gartner's analysis praises Pentaho’s “comprehensive” suite of features and “lightweight footprint” while highlighting its low license fee and competitive total cost of ownership. Gartner also states that it expects future BI surveys in years to come will “show growth in the size and pervasiveness of Pentaho deployments.”

Pentaho is the information delivery and analysis application embedded within SpidexBI from Spidex Software. SpidexBI is a powerful web-based reports dashboard used by Mainsaver CMMS users across the UK and Ireland to measure maintenance KPIs in real-time. The software extracts performance data held in Mainsaver and displays it in easy-to-read-and-interpret graphical formats, with powerful drill-down capabilities to help perform root-cause analysis.

Spidex Software won Pentaho’s global “Partner of the Year” award for embedded business intelligence in 2009-10 following the development of SpidexBI .

Commenting on the new report, Spidex Managing Director Jonathan Starling said “We are delighted to see that Gartner has recognised Pentaho. Mainsaver has been a fixture in Gartner’s equivalent CMMS report for many years, so it is extremely pleasing to see other components within our suite of offerings being recognised.”

The complete Gartner "Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence Platforms" report can be viewed by following the link below:

http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1982NPD&ct=120208&st=sb

UK Technology analysts Ovum have performed their own analysis of Business Intelligence platforms. For this exercise they assessed which vendors offered, in their view, the world's leading Business Intelligence systems. Pentaho was among the 8 BI suppliers selected for analysis, alongside household-name providers like IBM and Microsoft.

The full article can be viewed on the link below.

http://ovum.com/press_releases/ovum-decision-matrix-business-intelligence-vendors-must-differentiate-themselves-on-agility-and-relevance/

The contract will take effect immediately and will offer users at the company’s production sites in Carlton (South Yorkshire), Moreton (Wirral) and Stoke-on-Trent (Staffordshire) access to specialist day-to-day Mainsaver assistance via telephone, email and web portal.

“We are delighted to begin our new relationship with Manor Bakeries,” commented Spidex Managing Director Jonathan Starling “and we look forward to serving them as customers.”

“Spidex Software has a near-perfect customer retention rate and a large part of that success can be attributed to the strength of our in-house support team. Each member is a specialist, because supply and support of Mainsaver is Spidex’s central purpose rather than a secondary or legacy one.”

Spidex Software is the sole designated Mainsaver distributor and support centre for the UK & Ireland. It provides technical assistance for almost the entire Mainsaver user community across the territory, as well as delivering brand new installations, training, onsite consultancy and software upgrades.

Manor Bakeries manufactures some of the UK’s most familiar and best-loved products. Mr Kipling Slices, Cherry Bakewells, Cadbury Mini-Rolls, along with comprehensive ranges of own-label pies, fancies, cup-cakes, battenbergs and swiss rolls are all created at its three production sites.

Manor Bakeries is part of Premier Foods, the largest food producer in the UK.

Spidex dRA (Dynamic Risk Assessment) is a web- and mobile-enabled health & safety module, specifically designed to operate in real-time environments alongside the company’s well-established maintenance management solutions, including Spidex WM and the award-winning Mainsaver CMMS.

Spidex dRA automatically prompts an engineer logging on to a maintenance work order to consider the safety implications associated with the task he or she is about to carry out. This takes the form of a short “yes-no” questionnaire which is configurable by each customer to suit the specific requirements of their operating environment.

The responses entered by the engineer will either confirm that any risks associated with the impending task have already been mitigated, or will trigger an exception requiring the creation of a fresh risk assessment with associated approver sign-off.

Spidex Managing Director Jonathan Starling said “There is still pressure on all types of organisations – both from customers and from regulatory bodies – to demonstrate the presence of a 'safety conscious' culture. Spidex dRA offers a straightforward, easy-to-use, fully auditable means of improving workplace safety and achieving greater regulatory compliance.”

“Look in any edition of any trade publication and there will usually be a report of an injury or fatality to someone in his or her workplace. There are potentially dreadful consequences of unsafe working practices, many of which are attributable to simple underestimation of risk and hazard. Spidex dRA forces users to re-consider these risks on each and every work order.”

Spidex customers interested in purchasing Spidex dRA will require an upgrade of their existing CMMS installation to Mainsaver v.11.6 alongside Spidex WM v.2.2. To arrange this, or simply to find out more, please call Spidex Software on +44 844 324 9190 or email sales@spidex.co.uk .

Mainsaver has been used successfully by the engineering team at SITA’s Tees Valley plant for a number of years but as UK demand for Energy-from-Waste increases, the company is looking to roll out standardised maintenance procedures across its existing and forthcoming new-build facilities.

SITA’s Energy-from-Waste plants convert ordinary household and business waste into electricity as part of a multi-site energy recovery operation that collectively produces more than one million megawatt-hours every year.

“Energy-from-Waste is the future” says SITA’s EfW Regional Manager Cliff Matthews, “and we need to ensure that our ongoing investment in new facilities is fully supported by robust maintenance procedures.”

“SITA has already won waste industry awards for operations and maintenance excellence, but we can still improve knowledge-sharing within the business. Our aim is to define, refine and standardise maintenance best practice and thereby compare performance between sites to improve output.”

“In order to do this we need consistent, easy-to-analyse management information, which is what Mainsaver provides. We will be making good use of all the technology advantages that Mainsaver offers, including touchscreen operation, mobile working and barcode scanning.”

The existing facilities included in the initial Mainsaver rollout will be the EfW plants on the Isle of Man (pictured above) and at Kirklees, Yorkshire.  SITA UK’s new-build programme is already under way, and Mainsaver is included in the original build & commission specification at additional sites in Cornwall and Suffolk. Each new site will have Mainsaver already installed when its first day of operation arrives.

The four sites – at Corby, Banbury and Ossett in the UK and at Helmond in the Netherlands – produce a comprehensive range of batters, breadings and seasonings. These ingredients are used by successful food producers across the globe to create innovative new products for the retail and foodservice markets.

The selection of Mainsaver was prompted by a requirement for consistent management information across the four factories. Senior Engineering Manager Steve Evans explains the background to the decision.

“We had a number of separate systems in place, each recording a different aspect of maintenance” he explains “which made it difficult to get a clear overall picture of how we were performing. We fully expect that when Mainsaver is installed at all four sites we will have access to consistent, meaningful management data that we can use to improve. ”

There are two immediate areas in which improvements are being anticipated following Mainsaver’s introduction. Steve Evans again: “In common with most other engineering departments, our objective is to increase the amount of planned maintenance that we do – being proactive, rather than reactive. But we also see a great opportunity to rationalise our spare parts stockholding by analysing Mainsaver’s spares usage data – in fact, stores savings alone should justify the entire project.”

As the appointed Mainsaver distributor and support provider for the EMEA region, Spidex Software will be providing full technical, training and implementation assistance, as well as ongoing helpdesk services for the project. The first phase of Mainsaver user training and site implementations are scheduled to commence in early 2012.

Spidex Managing Director Jonathan Starling commented; “We are delighted to welcome such a widely-respected food ingredients manufacturer as Newly Weds to our ever-expanding Mainsaver user community, and we look forward to a long and happy association.”

In conjunction with specialist training partner Astutis (www.astutis.com), Spidex is offering all the required courses and examinations necessary to attain the NEBOSH National General Certificate in Occupational Health & Safety. This certificate is the leading foundation-level qualification in the subject, providing not only a thorough grounding in H & S theory and practice, but also a solid basis for future specialism or further study within the discipline.

The courses will take place in two separate week-long sections with a subsequent day of invigilated exams at the Spidex training facility in Coleshill, Warwickshire. The dates for these sections are as follows:

Unit 1 - Management of Health & Safety: 30th January - 3rd February 2012

Unit 2 - Controlling Workplace Hazards: 27 Feb – 2 March 2012

Unit 3 - Examination Day: 12th March 2012

The standard cost for the NEBOSH course is £1695.00 per delegate. Spidex customers will pay just £1000.00 - a discount of more than 40%!

Further information, the syllabus and booking details are available on the Spidex website at http://www.spidexsoftware.co.uk/events  Those interested in attending should contact Spidex directly or simply fill in the inquiry form on the website.