AV Group Turns a 5-Day Scheduling Process Into a 1-Hour Task
The AV Group was buried in spreadsheet-based scheduling that ate days of planner time and produced metrics nobody trusted. Sockeye integrated with their Maximo CMMS, reduced time spent on weekly scheduling by 90%, and provided trustworthy KPIs for continuous improvement.
BOOK A DEMOAbout the AV Group
The AV Group is a Canadian subsidiary of the Aditya Birla Group, a corporation operating in metals, cement, financial services, and viscose staple fiber production. Their mills produce high-quality dissolving grade pulp used to manufacture viscose staple fiber, and they’ve earned recognition as one of Atlantic Canada’s Top Employers.
KEY CHALLENGE
Spreadsheet-based scheduling ate up to five days of planner time per week and produced unreliable metrics. It took ages to build a simple report, and those reports still missed key insights, such as how much PM was completed or what work was missed each week.
HOW SOCKEYE HELPED
Sockeye synced directly with their existing Maximo solution to automate data entry, simplify scheduling with drag-and-drop functionality, and allow precise labor availability tracking to adjust schedules before overtime becomes an issue.
BENEFITS & RESULTS
Weekly scheduling is now completed in under an hour, which previously took up to five days. Sockeye provides them with trustworthy KPIs, real-time resource leveling, and live labor utilization data, leading to reduced overtime, expedited payroll, and improved production uptime.
“Sockeye identifies where deficiencies are in your man hours, so you can level between crews. For instance, if Crew A is 40 hours over schedule, but Crew B is only 35% scheduled, you can move your resources to level it out to avoid overtime pay. That saves you money.”
Todd Hicks, Planning and Shutdown Superintendent AT AV Group
Challenges AV GROUP FACED
Cumbersome spreadsheets made scheduling unreliable
Todd Hicks, Planning and Shutdown Superintendent at the AV Group, oversees a multi-disciplinary workforce operating on complex shift patterns in a risk-intolerant environment.
Together with his team, he sought to implement a proactive, weekly scheduling process but faced a number of hurdles. Work order and labor data had to be copied into spreadsheets. The approach was fragile — it would only work if the data was copied in the exact format required. Additionally, this process would need to be repeated whenever reactive work had to be added to the schedule.
This was extremely time-consuming. To make things worse, it produced unreliable KPIs. Since spreadsheets are easily copied and edited on employees’ computers, anyone could alter their numbers (whether intentionally or by mistake).
When they created weekly schedules, there was always a chance someone might inflate their numbers. This made it quite challenging to determine if employees are honestly following the system.
Furthermore, it took them ages to build a simple report. And even when they were finished, the AV Group still missed key insights, such as how much PM was completed or what work was missed each week.
Their challenges were clear:
- Creating schedules for six crews took up to five days, and a single shutdown schedule required up to 40 hours.
- Anyone could modify spreadsheets once copied, making it hard to track changes or trust the numbers.
- Mill-wide metrics were impossible to compare reliably across departments.
- There was no way to verify schedule accuracy and other metrics without printing everything out and comparing it week over week.
There was just no accurate way to compare one department to another. It was miserable to get metrics, especially when doing it mill-wide.
Todd Hicks, Planning and Shutdown Superintendent
The AV Group needed a proactive weekly scheduling process, but spreadsheets couldn’t deliver the reliability (or flexibility) they needed for mission-critical operations.
MAXIMO scheduling bolt-on as a Solution
Sockeye’s automated scheduling saved time and money
The AV Group chose to implement Sockeye to streamline weekly and daily scheduling. Both the deployment and adoption were fast, thanks to how easy Sockeye is to use and its knowledgeable support team.
“Deployment was a piece of cake, really. There was only one task for IT, and that was to create the interfaces. Sockeye worked very closely with us to configure them. Now the schedule is visible to everyone, and we’ve eliminated key-in time cards.”
Brian Delvecchio, IT Director
Sockeye syncs work orders and labor availability directly from the AV Group’s CMMS, Maximo. The information flows automatically, so planners know it’s accurate and current.
Now, Todd can see which crews have capacity and which ones are overloaded. He can move workers around to balance the workload before overtime becomes necessary. Supervisors spend less time on paperwork and more time on the shop floor, and tradespeople see their assignments in advance.
Here’s what changed with Sockeye:
- Drag-and-drop scheduling replaced days of manual work.
- Automatic data sync eliminates copy-paste errors.
- Real-time resource leveling shows labor hour imbalances across crews, making it easy to shift workers and avoid unnecessary overtime.
- Integrated time capture feeds daily assignments directly into the time and attendance system, freeing supervisors from admin work.
- Reliable KPIs provide trustworthy metrics for reactive, preventive, and corrective maintenance across the entire mill.
- Better schedule visibility lets tradespeople see their assignments ahead of time, eliminating start-of-shift scrambles.
“What used to take me up to five days of work can now be done with Sockeye in just under an hour. Because Sockeye synchronizes the data directly from our CMMS, we know the information is valid and trustworthy. When our guys get to the stores, we know that the parts ordered have been activated. We can also trust the data in Sockeye for payroll. With just three keystrokes, we pay 75 people.”
Todd Hicks, Planning and Shutdown Superintendent
With Sockeye, supervisors can finally balance workloads across crews in real time and catch capacity issues before they turn into expensive overtime. When Crew A is buried and Crew B has space, they shift resources. Simple as that.
RESULTS they achieved
From 5-day scheduling marathon to 1-hour sprint
Planned work replaced emergencies, which is great since scheduled work costs 10 times less and causes 3 times fewer accidents than emergency work. For large facilities, that translates to millions in optimized production capacity.
Here’s what the AV Group achieved after implementing Sockeye:
Weekly crew scheduling went from days to hours. What took five days now takes under an hour — a huge time saver.
Reduced overtime & expedited payroll. Real-time resource leveling lets supervisors balance workloads across crews, leading to less overtime.
Mill-wide KPIs are trustworthy. A range of KPIs for reactive, preventive, and corrective maintenance is produced automatically in Sockeye, giving valuable insight into worker performance. Managers can see trending numbers by department, helping pinpoint problem areas.
Shutdown scheduling dropped from 40 hours to 1 hour. That’s a 98% reduction in time spent on this critical scheduling task.
Data integrity is back. There is now a high degree of confidence and trust in the accuracy and reliability of scheduling data managed in Sockeye.
Planned work replaced emergencies. Better scheduling freed up capacity for more preventative maintenance, reducing emergency work and safety incidents.
Production uptime improved. Less emergency work and improved workforce utilization resulted in increased production uptime and capacity.
“Sockeye eliminated the ambiguity associated with previous spreadsheets and paper-based processes. Now a work order is either done or not. We’ve captured the consistency we sought by implementing Sockeye. Having evaluated other solutions prior to deployment, Sockeye is the best work order scheduling solution on the market today!”
Todd Hicks, Planning and Shutdown Superintendent