Sectors / Manufacturing / Barclay Chemicals – Preventive Maintenance Case Study

Case Study · Manufacturing / Chemical

Barclay Chemicals: From paper files to digital PM tracking

An employee built a SharePoint-based preventive maintenance system that replaced paper records, freed up 5.5 hours of admin per maintenance cycle, and ensured all equipment is maintained as required.

Manufacturing Lean Practitioner 8-Step Problem Solving Brainstorming Impact/Ease Chart Standard Work

Industry

Manufacturing / Crop Protection

Programme

Lean Practitioner

Location

Dublin, Ireland

5.5 hrs

Admin time freed per maintenance cycle

100%

Equipment now maintained on schedule

Digital

SharePoint tracking replaced paper filing

The Problem

5.5 hours of admin before any maintenance work even starts

Barclay Chemicals is a family-owned Irish company dedicated to the supply of crop protection products for over 30 years. From their Dublin base, they deliver registration, manufacturing and distribution of herbicides and fungicides throughout Europe, employing over 85 people.

An employee in the maintenance team identified that there was no tracking system for preventive maintenance tasks. The consequences were significant:

5.5 hours spent on administration before any actual maintenance work was carried out
No visibility on which machines were due for maintenance or what had been completed
Paper-based recording and filing — reports had to be physically stored and retrieved
Time wasted organising workloads as team members were transferred between admin, maintenance and project work
No equipment history available for planning or auditing purposes
Risk of equipment being overlooked for maintenance, leading to unplanned breakdowns

The Journey

From paper chaos to a digital system everyone can access

Challenge

Key Challenges

The maintenance team needed to:

Create a tracking system to record PM task completion and due dates
Build a filing system for service reports and PM reports
Enable data entry from any location (not just the maintenance office)
Manage tasks by area showing detailed standards, checks and results
Design reports on due and overdue tasks
Free up the 5.5 hours of admin time for actual maintenance work

Solution

The Lean Solution

The team used the 8-Step methodology with a brainstorming session:

Silent brainstorming session surfaced ideas from IT, maintenance and operations perspectives
Impact/Ease chart prioritised the countermeasures
Built a SharePoint-based PM tracking system with task management, scheduling and reporting
Created a digital reports library replacing paper filing — accessible from any location
Implemented weekly team meetings to review PM status and train users
Established a SharePoint Lab Administrator role to audit the system
Linked equipment history, manuals library and P&ID tag numbers into the system

“The 5.5 hours spent on admin before any maintenance is carried out could be greatly reduced. This would free up time to carry out more maintenance which, in turn, would reduce the number of breakdowns.”
— Barclay Chemicals maintenance team

Our Approach

8-Step Problem-Solving Process

The brainstorming session brought together IT systems expertise, practical maintenance knowledge, organisational skills and a willingness to question current practices — exactly the mix needed for a digital transformation project.

Problem

No PM tracking system. 5.5 hours of admin before any maintenance starts. Paper-based filing. No equipment visibility.

Current State

Mapped the full PM workflow from task identification to completion and filing. Quantified admin overhead at 5.5 hours per cycle.

Target

Digital tracking system. Tasks managed by area with standards and results. Reports on due/overdue tasks. Access from any location.

Root Cause

Brainstorming session: no digital system, paper-based recording, no centralised task management, no equipment history.

Countermeasures

SharePoint PM system built. Digital reports library. Weekly team meetings. Administrator role established for auditing.

Implementation

System deployed with user training. Weekly meetings established. Tasks input into maintenance schedule. Reports automated.

Evaluation

All machines now maintained on schedule. Admin time significantly reduced. System easy to navigate and audit.

Standardisation

Users taking ownership — adding manuals, P&ID tags, spare parts. System continuously improving. Lab Administrator auditing regularly.

Key Outcomes

A system that improves itself

The project delivered both immediate efficiency gains and a platform for continuous improvement:

All machines now maintained as required. The tracking system ensures nothing is overlooked — due and overdue tasks are visible to everyone.
Labour redeployment. The 5.5 hours of admin time freed per cycle can now be spent on actual maintenance work — directly reducing breakdown risk.
Digital reports library. Service reports and PM records are now accessible from any location, searchable, and permanently stored — replacing paper filing.
User-driven improvement. Once users were involved from the beginning, they took ownership and kept improving the system — adding manuals, P&ID tag numbers, and planning to incorporate spare parts tracking.
Weekly team meetings. Regular reviews keep the system current and provide a forum for identifying new improvement opportunities.

Learnings

User input from the beginning is critical — the finished system must be suitable for all who use it, not just the designer.
Communication was not clear initially — different team members had different mental models of how the system should look. Shared terminology matters.
Regular meetings with all team members ensured alignment — keeping minutes with agreed actions was essential.
Everyone brought something different: IT expertise, ideas, practical experience, organisational skills, and a willingness to question current practice.
Things had to be tried more than once — setting up the library and naming conventions took iteration.
Completing the project alongside daily responsibilities was challenging — management support is crucial.
Once users are involved from the start, they take ownership and keep improving — the system evolves beyond the original scope.

Conclusion

Ownership drives continuous improvement

The most significant outcome wasn’t just the system itself — it was that users took ownership of it and continued to improve it beyond the original project scope. That’s the hallmark of a successful Lean project: it doesn’t just solve the immediate problem, it creates the conditions for continuous improvement. The manuals library, P&ID tags and spare parts tracking were all added by users, not consultants.

LeanTeams has worked with Barclay Chemicals since 2016. You may also be interested in: Case Study 2 – Continuous Improvement. All our case studies are available here.

Tools & Approaches Used