Arcadia Cold Storage specializes in providing the food industry with third-party handling, storage, distribution, and value-added services. Operations at Arcadia Cold's first three locations in Hazleton, PA, Atlanta, GA, and Burleson, TX, will commence by summer 2023.
Don Arsenault joined Arcadia Cold Storage in January 2023 as Director of Maintenance Startup. In his new role, Don's responsibilities include:
- Building the maintenance strategy.
- Hiring maintenance leaders for each location.
- Implementing technology, systems and processes to make the maintenance team successful.
Starting From New
Food spoils quickly unless stored at the correct temperature, so system failures in the cold storage business can be very disruptive and costly to our customers.
Arcadia Cold's mission is to revolutionize the Third-Party Logistics (3PL) space by setting a new standard of excellence in the industry. A significant system failure would mean a broken promise.
The maintenance organization must deliver best-in-class maintenance across all sites to support the company's ambitious vision. The maintenance organization's ultimate goal mirrors that of Arcadia's CEO: exceed expectations, each and every time.
Implementing maintenance excellence out of the gate in a new company is crucial for establishing a solid foundation for efficient and reliable operations. To achieve this, we identified several key steps:
1. The company should develop a comprehensive maintenance strategy aligning with its business objectives. This strategy should include preventive maintenance plans, asset management protocols, and clearly defined performance indicators.
2. The company should invest in a robust CMMS software system to streamline maintenance processes, track assets, schedule preventive maintenance, and generate insightful reports for data-driven decision-making.
3. We must prioritize training and development programs for the maintenance team; equipping them with the skills and knowledge to perform their tasks effectively is essential.
4. Implement regular performance evaluations and continuous improvement initiatives to ensure ongoing maintenance excellence.
By focusing on these pillars, Arcadia can establish a culture of maintenance excellence from the start, which will lead to improved asset reliability, increased productivity, and long-term cost savings.
“We thoroughly evaluated various CMMS software vendors, considering factors such as functionality, ease of use, scalability, and support.”
The CMMS Search
Everyone in the maintenance organization should have access to the same systems, resources, and processes to help institutionalize best-in-class maintenance from day one.
Arcadia is implementing top-of-the-line technology solutions to help deliver a superior customer experience, so selecting the right CMMS was critical.
We thoroughly evaluated various CMMS software vendors, considering functionality, ease of use, scalability, and support factors. Our key functionality requirements were:
1. Asset management: The CMMS software should provide a centralized database to store equipment information, maintenance histories, and associated documentation.
2. Work order management: The software should facilitate creating, assigning, and tracking work orders. Maintenance technicians should access work orders on their mobile devices, receive real-time notifications, and update the status of tasks, ensuring efficient collaboration and timely completion of maintenance activities.
3. Preventive maintenance: The CMMS software should enable the scheduling and tracking of preventive maintenance tasks, ensuring regular inspections, lubrications, calibrations, and other maintenance activities.
4. Reporting and analysis: The software should have robust reporting capabilities, allowing the maintenance team to generate customized reports on asset performance, work order history, maintenance costs, and other key metrics. These insights will support data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement efforts.
5. Multi-Site capabilities: To help standardize the way of working and promote consistency, we wanted a single system with multi-site CMMS functionality. Multi-site facilitates collaboration and knowledge sharing across sites, improving teamwork and increasing efficiency.
Having all maintenance information in one place makes identifying trends and patterns in equipment failures easier, helping us make more informed decisions about maintenance processes, resource allocation, schedules, equipment replacement, and new equipment selection.
“The decision to move forward with Zoidii at Arcadia Cold was a no-brainer”
Choosing Zoidii
From my experience, technicians and computers don't always go hand in hand. An excellent technician may not necessarily be comfortable with computers, so I decided to make it really simple for the technicians.
When searching for a new CMMS, we wanted something intuitive and easy to use. We investigated several vendors, but Zoidii’s ease of use immediately stood out. It satisfied all our requirements in terms of functionality. I had used Zoidii in a previous role, and the feedback was always positive.
Training new hires on the CMMS was easy, with very few questions. I always said if you brought a three-year-old in, I could have them running work orders in Zoidii in a few minutes. Ease of use translates into ease of training and onboarding new employees. So the decision to move forward with Zoidii at Arcadia Cold was a no-brainer.
With Zoidii onboard as our strategic maintenance partner, Arcadia Cold will be able to deliver a superior customer experience with its ability to:
- Limit equipment downtime through regular inspections and proactive maintenance activities, identify and address issues before they lead to significant failures, and ensure optimal asset reliability and availability.
- Document everything maintenance-related across all sites in one centralized maintenance system.
- Standardize the way of working through preventive maintenance and checklists across all of Arcadia's cold storage facilities.
- Facilitate a culture of learning and transparency by sharing knowledge and insights.
- Give us the maintenance KPIs we need to track performance and identify areas for improvement across all sites.
Early results
Implementing Zoidii has helped us institutionalize best-in-class maintenance out of the gate. It is also helping to reinforce our company values of accountability, integrity, transparency, and impact (Link - https://arcadiacold.com/values/). The key results and benefits we have seen so far are as follows:
- Improved asset reliability: Regular inspections and proactive maintenance activities help identify and address issues before they lead to major failures, ensuring optimal asset reliability and availability.
- Enhanced productivity: The streamlined work order management process, coupled with real-time notifications, is helping to maximize productivity. Maintenance technicians can access work orders and instructions in the mobile CMMS app on their phones, eliminating the need for manual paperwork and improving overall productivity.
- Data-driven decision-making: The software provides detailed analytics and reporting, offering valuable insights. Tracking maintenance costs and generating insightful reports helps us identify cost-saving opportunities and optimize maintenance budgets effectively.
Rolling out best-in-class maintenance
Arcadia plans to grow quickly over the next 3-5 years as they add new facilities across the United States. With Zoidii's multi-site and cloning functionality, we can quickly add new locations and copy the assets and PMs from earlier sites.
Having a sound system in place early that can scale with us is a huge relief. If someone asked me to recommend a CMMS, I would definitely recommend Zoidii. I have been in maintenance for 25 years, and it's the best CMMS system I've used.