From spreadsheet chaos to a single source of truth
For 25 years, Steven Dolbec, Preventive Maintenance Team Manager at L3 Harris’s Integrated Vision Systems in Londonderry, New Hampshire, has navigated various engineering and quality roles within the company. His current mission: optimizing the maintenance of equipment across eight product lines in their single facility, which produces vision and laser systems for military use.
Before Asset Essentials, L3 Harris struggled with a fragmented approach to maintenance. While a previous CMMS was acquired, it was never effectively implemented for facilities, and Dolbec, then managing a test services group, found it “too much work for what we got out of it.”
The core problem?
“One of the most important parts of a tool like a CMMS is the ability to be able to get data out of it,” Dolbec explains. Without this, analyzing KPIs, uptime and cost-effectiveness of different equipment types was nearly impossible. Eventually, his small team reverted to spreadsheets, a solution that worked for a few individuals but couldn’t scale.
The turning point came when Asset Essentials was reintroduced to the facilities group in 2020 to meet insurance audit requirements. While initially successful, a change in facilities management led to the tool falling into disuse. However, the manufacturing engineering group began exploring Asset Essentials for production equipment around 2021-2022. Recognizing the potential, Dolbec, upon taking on his current role, spearheaded a comprehensive revitalization. “We picked it up, brushed it off, cleaned it up, and then off we went,” Dolbec recounts.
Working with the facilities manager, they established a streamlined, standardized process, creating two distinct sites within Asset Essentials — one for facilities and one for production — each with tailored controls. Dolbec now acts as the global administrator, overseeing two site administrators.
Asset Essentials: The central hub for production maintenance
With 800 production employees and an eight-person PM team, managing maintenance effectively is paramount. Asset Essentials provides the single stream for all incoming work. Production supervisors and group leaders initiate service requests for corrective maintenance, which are triaged by their manufacturing engineering support team. If specialized expertise is needed, the PM team steps in.
The transparency and consistent tracking Asset Essentials provide is invaluable. The system also stores OEM manuals and PM procedures, ensuring quick access for technicians. While L3 Harris takes a “crawl, walk, run” approach, they are steadily adding parts tracking to manage stock and draw down.
Data Share: Powering realtime insights and daily decisions
A recent and significant enhancement to L3 Harris’s operations is the integration of Data Share. This tool connects Asset Essentials data to other internal analysis platforms, providing real-time insights for critical decision-making.
“The reason why we went with [Data Share] was to produce what we call here Tier 2 equipment slides,” Dolbec explains. These are essentially running action-item lists for daily production meetings. Two distinct slides are generated: one for current work and new items, and another that tracks equipment performance over time, highlighting repeat failures and their frequency. “We’re using Data Share for those two slides so that we’ll be able to derive service requests... and then service requests on equipment,” Dolbec adds.
This real-time data allows production lines to proactively address equipment issues, moving away from reactive responses. While currently displayed on whiteboards, the long-term vision is fully electronic dashboards on large monitors across the production floor. Data Share will also be instrumental in generating broader reporting, such as weekly “items of importance” for management.
A swimming pool of data: The value of a centralized system
Dolbec, with his extensive background in process design and quality management (including ISO 9001 certification), understands the critical importance of a robust, centralized system. He likens Asset Essentials to a “swimming pool” where everyone can “swim together” — a single source of truth for all maintenance records.
This centralized data not only streamlines operations but also provides critical information for financial decisions. Asset Essentials data supports return on investment (ROI) calculations for replacement equipment, allowing L3 Harris to make informed capital expenditure decisions.
L3 Harris’s journey with Asset Essentials exemplifies how a strategic approach to CMMS implementation, combined with a commitment to data integrity and continuous improvement, can significantly enhance operational efficiency, support compliance and provide invaluable insights for a complex manufacturing environment.