eMaint > Case Studies > Jack Daniel Cooperage's Transition to Predictive Maintenance with eMaint and Fluke Vibration Sensors

Jack Daniel Cooperage's Transition to Predictive Maintenance with eMaint and Fluke Vibration Sensors

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Computerized Maintenance Management Systems (CMMS)
Sensors - Vibration Sensors

Applicable Industries

Equipment & Machinery
Food & Beverage

Applicable Functions

Facility Management
Maintenance

Use Cases

Inventory Management
Predictive Maintenance

Services

System Integration

About The Customer

The Jack Daniel Cooperage, located in Trinity, Alabama, is a facility where barrels or casks are made. It is part of the Brown-Forman family of brands that produce and distribute spirits and wine worldwide. The cooperage creates barrels for Jack Daniel’s and other brands within Brown-Forman, producing thousands of barrels per week. The facility uses state-of-the-art technology to make its barrels, which are made of American white oak from local mills. The cooperage has an extensive dust collection system and requires a strong attention to detail and a firm commitment to asset management.

The Challenge

The Jack Daniel Cooperage, a facility that produces thousands of barrels per week for Jack Daniel’s and other brands within Brown-Forman, faced a significant challenge in maintaining its state-of-the-art barrel-making equipment. The maintenance and engineering manager, Martin Nelson, and his team of 18 technicians were tasked with ensuring the facility remained operational and met Jack Daniel’s exacting standards. The team used eMaint CMMS software and two types of vibration sensors from Fluke Reliability to monitor their equipment. However, they needed a more efficient way to generate work orders when their equipment exceeded temperature and vibration thresholds. The challenge was to improve their preventive maintenance and transition into predictive maintenance. The cooperage also had an extensive dust collection system that required meticulous attention to detail and a strong commitment to asset management.

The Solution

To address the challenge, the Jack Daniel Cooperage team connected condition monitoring sensors with their maintenance software. This allowed them to automatically generate work orders when their equipment exceeded temperature and vibration thresholds, thereby improving their preventive maintenance and transitioning into predictive maintenance. Every technician on the team used eMaint, relying heavily on its work order and inventory management features. They customized PMs to include pictures with captions explaining what needed to be done. The work order system in eMaint became a crucial tool for the cooperage, helping to plan and prioritize work. Nelson used several different categories of work orders, including RCCA (root cause and corrective action), safety work, corrective maintenance, TPM (total productive maintenance), and emergency maintenance. This helped the team ensure they had the resources they needed when and where they needed them.

Operational Impact

The implementation of eMaint and Fluke Vibration Sensors at the Jack Daniel Cooperage resulted in a significant overhaul of their maintenance practices. The revamped inventory management system was so successful that other facilities within Brown-Forman decided to implement it as well. The cooperage also benefited from the use of two types of vibration monitoring sensors from Fluke Reliability. These sensors and software worked together to keep the maintenance team updated on how equipment was operating. The sensors offered advanced alarm tools to monitor for specific failures and collected several different types of data. This allowed the maintenance teams to advance their connected reliability journey, centralizing data from different systems and tools to make it readily accessible and actionable. The success of these strategies led to their adoption throughout Brown-Forman.