Enter Mike Chambers, Corporate Maintenance and Reliability Champion at Sonoco. A believer in web technology advances, he had heard about an enterprise asset management package from DPSI called iMaint. Sonoco already had experience using another software package from DPSI — PMC — which is one of the most widely used and successful CMMS in the world. Feedback from employees about PMC was positive, so Chambers decided to evaluate iMaint to determine if it would meet the company’s needs.

Chambers put together an assessment team including members representing Sonoco plants of various sizes, and made a visit to DPSI’s headquarters in Greensboro, N.C. They sat down with Fred Riek, DPSI chairman and CEO, Carol Owens, DPSI president, and other DPSI staff. “We evaluated iMaint from top to bottom,” says Chambers.

“After the trip, I asked each team member to provide a critique of what they had seen in Greensboro compared to what they had seen at other vendors or at their own plants,” Chambers continues. “Sonoco used a quantitative process to compare iMaint against software from two other vendors. One of the other vendors had DPSI beat in some aspects. But when we looked at the total package, including cost, DPSI won.”

Three factors influenced Sonoco’s decision: customer support, functionality, and cost. “DPSI has an excellent focus on meeting the customer’s needs,” Chambers remarks. “The people who were using PMC at Sonoco were very complimentary about DPSI’s technical support. While you expect a high level of support during installation and implementation, with some vendors the interest wears off quickly. DPSI has been and continues to be very responsive in all respects.”

Chambers adds, “Going back to our three drivers, for failure analysis and planning we found that iMaint has capabilities that are above and beyond the other packages. iMaint is easier to use for failure analysis, and for planning provides the ability to put in multiple tasks, costs and schedules for a specific work order. In some of the other packages we considered, you would have to do a plan or cost estimate in a word-processing document or spreadsheet and attach it.” On the subject of cost, Chambers notes, “We could have spent less money, but for the functionality and service we wanted, iMaint was the most cost-effective solution.”