Cemcor, one of Northern Ireland’s leading cement production companies, has signed a new three-year deal with class-leading Enterprise Asset Management specialist, Peacock Engineering Ltd. The move comes as the company looks to further invest in improving processes, sustainability and reducing the carbon footprint of its Cookstown plant.
The partnership with Peacock Engineering has seen Cemcor rapidly migrate its existing SAP system into IBM Maximo Application Suite (MAS). MAS, one of IBM’s sustainability software solutions, offers a single platform for intelligent asset management, monitoring, maintenance, computer vision, safety and reliability, enabling the company to have a 360-degree, real time view of its asset base, across multiple sites simultaneously, if needed.
Cemcor operates a range of facilities and sites across the region, including the cement plant, which has a production capacity in excess of 450,000 tonnes, and a limestone quarry in Cookstown, a shale quarry in Dungannon and an import and export facility in Belfast Harbour.
The investment in its new Maximo EAM system, comes following the announcement last year of LLC Group, one of Northern Ireland’s largest companies, investing £15m in the firm.
MAS will enable Cemcor to gain better insight into the assets at the Cookstown plant, supporting in the maintenance programmes and management of its diverse asset base, which includes a wide range of complex machinery and heavy equipment such as dumper trucks, stone crushers, conveyors, stone mills, granulators, and drying kilns. The new system will help to ensure the company is well placed to resolve its maintenance challenges and optimise its assets, helping to increase the lifespan of essential equipment and improve inefficiencies, including in the procurement and usage of replacement parts. The new EAM system will also help in reducing downtime and the associated costs, increase profitability, while also enabling it to understand and streamline processes at the plant.
Matt Deadman, Chief Operations Officer of Peacock Engineering, said: “We’re thrilled to be working with Cemcor over the course of the next three years. We have already completed the first stage of our change programme with the successful delivery of its new EAM system. MAS is one of IBM’s sustainability software solutions, it will provide Cemcor with a clearer view of its assets, which include heavy plant and processing equipment, and help in mitigating the current challenges found in its maintenance programme.”
The project was completed in just a few months by Peacock Engineering, and is one of the first, and quickest, major implementations of IBM Maximo Application Suite (MAS) in the UK.
Matt added: “It’s been a pleasure working with Cemcor. As a specialist in both the technical aspects of engineering and in IT, we have managed the delivery in just two months. We are looking forward to working with Cemcor over the next few years to ensure its EAM solution continues to deliver the service level and efficiencies needed to meet its organisational objectives.”
