Muntons Transforms Maintenance Management and Achieves Site-Wide Visibility with Agility CMMS
Background
Established in 1921, Muntons Plc is one of the UK’s leading producers of malted products, producing 240,000 tonnes of malt and malted ingredients annually across four production sites: two maltings in Suffolk and Yorkshire, a peating plant in Yorkshire, and a specialist vacuum band-drying facility in Thailand.
Munton’s Head Office situated in Stowmarket, Suffolk spans 45 acres and incorporates a maltings, a malted ingredients production area, and an effluent plant. The site is supported by a team of 35 engineering personnel across process and site services disciplines, alongside a manned main store.
Russ Parry, Plant Reliability Leader, has been with Muntons for over a decade. Having been part of the team involved in an earlier SAP PM implementation, Russ took sole responsibility for transitioning the entire engineering and site services operation to Agility CMMS, a project that covered approximately 3,500 assets and locations and went live on 30th October 2023.
Industry
Malt processing and malted ingredients manufacturing.
Product
Aptean EAM Agility EAM/CMMS
Challenges
» Overly complex legacy CMMS requiring every user to hold a paid licence to be able to raise a ticket, resulting in shared passwords and poor data quality.
» No real-time reporting visibility; key maintenance metrics required manual Excel exports.
» Paper-based processes causing duplication, inaccuracy, and an inability to track job accountability.
Benefits
» 100% reduction in paper-based job management across the entire site.
» Real-time dashboards and automated shift reporting delivering site-wide visibility.
» Seamless daily SAP integration and improved stores accuracy through mobile parts issuing.
The Solution
Agility CMMS was selected to replace SAP Plant Maintenance (SAP PM) and centralise all engineering and site services maintenance activity at Muntons’ Stowmarket site. The decision, taken in May/June 2022, was driven by the need for a genuinely mobile-first system that could reduce administrative burden, deliver real-time data visibility, and integrate with SAP, which the wider Muntons business would continue to use for procurement and materials management.
Russ evaluated three CMMS providers before selecting Agility. Agility was chosen because the system met every primary requirement including mobile functionality, real-time reporting, document management, built-in SAP API integration, and a job request process that did not require every user to hold a licence.
Equally significant was the quality of the relationship with the Agility team, particularly for a project of this scale and complexity. Russ was introduced to Lloyd Reilly, Regional Account Manager, and to David Van Ruyckevelt, Senior Professional Services Consultant, who would be handling Munton’s implementation of Agility and who both became key partners throughout the project.
“Lloyd understood our needs from the start. The Agility team was approachable and knowledgeable across every single one of the many Teams calls we held. It was a straightforward, unanimous decision to go with Agility in the end.”
Russ Parry, Plant Reliability Leader, Muntons
Implementation began in February 2023, with Russ leading the project single-handedly on the Muntons side. The scope covered engineering and site services, approximately 3,500 assets and locations, along with a live integration with SAP materials. Russ and David worked closely throughout, with a site visit from the Agility team providing invaluable context for the configuration.
The system went live at 7:00am on 30th October 2023. Despite the scale of the transition, adoption was immediate and smooth.
“I waited for my phone to ring, expecting all manner of ‘this isn’t working’ and ‘what have you done?’ And then a job went on, and then another job went on. People just started using it without an issue. The greatest achievement was that no one noticed, it just sort of happened.”
Russ Parry, Plant Reliability Leader, Muntons
Job logging is now open to the entire site without requiring a licence: from a production operator reporting a fan trip, to someone in HR requesting a water station bottle replacement - anyone can raise a job through the helpdesk portal.
Russ manages several categories of work order through Agility, including:
» Planned preventive maintenance (PPM) — scheduled maintenance jobs allocated and tracked through the system, with full compliance visibility
» Breakdowns — raised via the helpdesk using structured triage questions, then crowdsourced to the engineering team
» Site services jobs — facilities maintenance including lighting, HVAC, building repairs, and general maintenance
» Health and safety jobs — automatically triggering email notifications to the QSHE team when raised and when closed
One of the most impactful improvements has been the introduction of triage questions. Previously, every breakdown was considered high priority with no way to distinguish urgency or type.
“The triage questions have saved us so much time. The very first question is whether it’s a production job, a site services job, or a health and safety job. And if it’s production, they have to say whether production has stopped or is continuing. That has stopped so many non-breakdowns being dispatched to engineers unnecessarily.”
Russ Parry, Plant Reliability Leader, Muntons
Another significant operational improvement came in the management of spare parts. Previously, engineers were required to log parts against both the job sheet and a separate booking-out form at the stores entrance, resulting in a duplication of work that was inconsistently followed. With Agility, engineers can now open their job on a mobile device, select the relevant SAP material, and issue the part directly against the job as they collect it from stores. Stores accuracy has improved as a result, and the manual step for stores personnel has been eliminated entirely.
Agility’s live dashboard capability has transformed visibility across the site. Rather than granting department heads access to the core system, which would quickly exhaust the available concurrent licences, Russ configured tailored live dashboards for each department showing jobs raised, jobs completed, open work orders, and planned maintenance activity in real time. Automated 12-hourly shift reports are generated and emailed directly to relevant managers, providing consistent operational visibility without manual intervention.
“Live dashboards prevented all of that. I just set them up a live dashboard and they can have on there whatever it is they want including jobs raised, jobs closed in their area, open jobs, number of PMs. The dashboards have proven very useful and informative to all departments.”
Russ Parry, Plant Reliability Leader, Muntons
The Multi-Scheduler has also become a key planning tool. Team leaders can view their full shift workload, see the status of each job in real time, and drag and drop jobs between engineers or days, providing day-to-day resource management capability that wasn’t available before.
Retaining integration with SAP was an essential requirement. Agility’s API integration runs automatically at 1:00am each day, synchronising materials data between the two systems. The integration now runs virtually without issues.
“Whatever’s happened in Agility, it will let SAP know, and whatever’s happened in SAP, it’ll let Agility know, every single day. That was a key requirement for us. It had to be able to talk to SAP.”
Russ
Parry, Plant Reliability Leader, Muntons
Muntons is also a committed sustainability business, and the shift away from paper has been a meaningful contribution to that agenda. Paper usage in job management has been reduced by 100%.
The Future
Muntons is one of a select group of customers participating in Aptean’s AI Early Adoption Programme, and trialling the Agility AI Assistant. Russ is actively exploring how AI can be used to automate the generation of management reports, a task that currently requires significant manual data analysis, and sees it as a major opportunity for the engineering function.
“AI, although in its infancy, is already changing how we tackle everyday tasks. If we get it right, it will save so much time and it will point you in directions you didn’t even know you needed to go. I really do think it will be huge.”
Russ Parry, Plant Reliability Leader, Muntons
Beyond AI, Muntons is looking to implement QR code functionality across its assets and spare parts. This will allow operators, including new starters who may be unfamiliar with engineering terminology, to scan a code and immediately access the correct asset record, reducing identification errors and streamlining job logging further.
The team is also continuing to enrich asset records with attached manuals, standard job instructions, and photographs, creating a growing library of in-field reference information accessible to engineers on their mobile devices.
“Having been through the pain of struggling with a CMMS that wasn’t really fit for purpose to then working with one that is, it’s just made my life, and our team’s life, a lot easier.”
Russ Parry, Plant Reliability Leader, Muntons
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