CASE STUDY: LANDS' END

Lands' End is one of the world’s largest direct marketers of traditionally-styled clothing, luggage, and home furnishings for men, women and children. The company, which sends out 269 million catalogs annually, also maintains the world’s largest Web site for apparel. In addition, Lands’ End operates 16 retail stores in the United States, three in the United Kingdom, and one in Japan.

The firm’s maintenance needs center around extensive distribution facilities in Dodgeville, Reedsburg, and Stevens Point, Wisconsin. When Lands' End decided to improve its maintenance management system, it found that DPSI's PMC software was a perfect fit.

PMC Implementation? No Problem
Lands’ End is famous for its efficiency in delivering products into customers’ hands just a few days after they have been ordered. Ironically, the company’s maintenance programs were running at far less than peak efficiency — something it was determined to change.

“Our old system was very basic,” Lands' End senior programmer analyst Carl Maglio explains. “Using Microsoft Access, they just keyed in the problem and someone would go out and fix it. Most unscheduled maintenance was entered after the fact. We didn’t have a preventive maintenance program, and we didn’t capture a great deal of information about our equipment.”

A consultant recommended that the company investigate PMC, Maglio recalls, because of its easy implementation and turnkey capabilities. He admitted to a bit of skepticism as he helped oversee the implementation. “As an information specialist, I know that when you first install new software, something about the program usually doesn't work," he says. “But we had no problems with PMC — we didn’t need to call the help desk once, which is amazing.”

Lands’ End chose to have the initial training conducted at its distribution facility in Dodgeville. “The training went very well,” says Maglio. “The person who came on site was very knowledgeable and showed us step-by-step how the software worked. We were up and running right away.”

When questions arose, the Lands’ End staff discovered that they could easily find answers in the PMC documentation. “The manuals are so intuitive — very different from most technical manuals, which aren’t fun to look at. The people who put it all together really knew what they were doing,” he says.

Maintenance is Routine
Lands’ End’s use of PMC is uniquely decentralized. Employees in each area of the company are free to use PMC in the way that best suits their job. One example is maintenance mechanic Kelvin Luna, who faces the daunting task of maintaining 36 monogramming machines, two engraving machines, and nine heat sealers that are used to close plastic garment bags. He is also responsible for conveyor belts that take clothing to the scanning and packing areas, and hoop presses used in the monogramming process.

The company’s old maintenance system wasn’t working well for Luna. “Before we acquired PMC, I kept track of all the information in a book,” he explains. “It was a lot of writing, and I had to keep track of a ton of books. But now, with PMC, I don’t have to do that anymore.”

PMC is set up to notify Luna when each of his monogramming machines is due for its annual preventive maintenance. He takes off the covers, cleans them, and blows out the lint. Then he pulls out and cleans the hooks, checking each one for burrs — needle marks that result when a needle nicks a hook. The parts are oiled down, lint is blown off the circuit boards, and each machine’s exterior is scrubbed. Finally, Luna cleans and lubricates the sewing heads, checks for loose connections on the circuit boards, and ensures that all of the cables are safely secured.

“Then I put everything back together and run some samples,” Luna says. “If the samples come out well, I put the machine back in service.”

Preventive maintenance on the heat sealers ? as well as the engraving machines that produce luggage tags ? is accomplished in much the same way. “With so many machines, I need PMC to tell me exactly when each machine needs to be taken care of,” explains Luna. “With the help of PMC, I’m able to do preventive maintenance on each unit every year at the same time." Luna also responds to immediate breakdowns, which may be caused by broken belts or light switches. “Whenever things break down, I enter it in PMC as an unscheduled work order,” says Luna. “I note how I fixed the problem and how much time it took me. I also track how long the equipment was down. This helps highlight breakdown trends that might otherwise go unnoticed."

PMC Ensures Necessary Parts are at Hand
Luna especially appreciates the parts and inventory module of PMC. He has entered 60 machine parts, all used to repair the equipment in his area, into the software's database. “PMC really makes my job easier. Now when something is broken, I have the parts on hand to fix it,” he says.

Each time Luna uses a part, he enters it in PMC. Once a month, he runs a report to ensure that he has the optimum number of parts in stock. “If I’m short, I send an e-mail to a vendor for a quote, then forward the quote and the parts number to the purchasing department,” he explains. “Purchasing takes care of the actual ordering.”

Having the right part at the right time is crucial for a direct merchant, especially a firm like Lands’ End that's famous for quick turnaround time. “Preventive maintenance helps ensure that I won’t have a breakdown, especially during the holiday rush,” says Luna. “But with PMC, if a breakdown does happen I know I can fix it quickly because I have the parts on hand.”

PMC Used for Equipment, Vehicle, and Building Maintenance
Lands’ End administrative assistant Jean McCarville has her own use for PMC. She coordinates the maintenance of the 578 assets for which her department has responsibility. Like Luna, she prints out work orders, assigns them to maintenance workers, and enters unscheduled repairs after the fact. “I do some of the parts reordering in PMC and then print reports, especially reports that list what has been done to a particular piece of equipment,” she says.

Recently, McCarville added the company’s fleet of about 20 vehicles to the database. These vehicles are used to carry mail and other items between the buildings in Dodgeville. “PMC helps keep them properly maintained,” says McCarville. “It ensures that we don’t miss preventative maintenance on any of them." “Currently we’re using PMC to document needed plumbing repairs,” she adds. “We have five different buildings and each one had its own group of contractors. That means that each one has its own type of plumbing fixtures. Now that we’re having trouble with the faucets in some of them, we hope that PMC will show us which ones we have better luck with when they need to be replaced.”

PMC Runs Flawlessly
The bar-coding features of PMC are the next growth opportunity for Lands’ End, according to programmer analyst Maglio. “We’ve looked at it, but we don’t have the technology in place yet to make it work. We know it will take us about a year to get the parts labeled,” he says.

All told, Maglio is very happy with PMC’s performance. “It’s been running flawlessly since we put it in,” he says. Luna, McCarville and millions of Lands’ End customers are currently enjoying the successful result.