How Cooke Aquaculture Utilizes iMaint

Cooke Aquaculture was founded in 1985 by the Cooke family with one farm and 5,000 salmon. Since then, it has grown into an innovative and fully-integrated global seafood company. Cooke Aquaculture utilizes iMaint to achieve marine maintenance success, ensuring all vessels, nets and cages operate on schedule.

A global company employing thousands, Cooke uses iMaint CMMS/EAM software in Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Maine and Washington, with hopes to expand to plants in Scotland, Chile and Spain in the near future. iMaint is used to track marine maintenance for approximately 600 different vessels or equipment at various sites.

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Marine maintenance includes vessels, nets and cages. In the net shop, nets are tagged as assets. iMaint is used to track:

  • All repairs on each net, including 100% of the labor hours used
  • Where each net is shipped to and installed
  • How long each net is in the water
  • Time in which a net is returned to the shop for repair
  • Met wash costs (comparing the weight when dirty and the weight once it has been cleaned)
  • How many times a net is washed on the water
  • Person responsible for washing the net
  • The proper net washing program used to keep fish healthy

After a net is repaired and has passed a break test, results are stored in iMaint for auditing purposes.

iMaint Customization

Cooke staff takes advantage of the customization capabilities that iMaint offers by renaming labels and views respective to job functions. For example, field labels in the net shop are different than those in marine maintenance. Navigation trees are also customized so that each site location only sees the data needed to their job. Custom security and custom forms have also been created so Cooke can track and report on data they find most useful for their company’s success.

Cooke Aquaculture utilizes iMaint customization capabilities by also changing labels on the main tab within the Asset and Work Order modules. This eliminates the need for a secondary tab, and makes it abundantly clear where data should be stored. Making the fields required also ensures consistency in data entry.

iMaint Modules Used

Cooke utilizes iMaint Requesters in addition to iMaint Mobile. When vessels, equipment or nets require maintenance, users submit work requests through their mobile devices or tablets. Work requests include data such as engine hours and current location. Work orders are created in iMaint for work that needs to be completed. The project module in iMaint is used for tracking vessels, and the procedures module is used to analyze estimated versus actual costs for work orders.

The project module assists Cooke with costing. Maintenance jobs may have multiple work orders associated with the project ID in addition to multiple procedure lines, including comments and miscellaneous costs. The project module allows staff to break down procedure lines by estimated versus actual costs.

Planning with iMaint

Each cage for fish is built from scratch. Using custom procedures and comparing estimated hours and parts to actuals, Cooke can determine from a production standpoint how much time and resources it takes to create a cage. Since all cages are also tagged like the nets, Cooke can also determine how many hours each cage is used and when it should be retired based on usage, wear and repair.

Information stored within iMaint helps Cooke plan for the year ahead by comparing data such as the cage life span to the cage construction costs. To help prevent vessel downtime, which would hinder the ability to provide fresh seafood, they have a large stock room for parts. 100% of maintenance time is tracked within iMaint and reported on a daily basis. This provides Cooke with a more accurate estimate of the timeframe and investment for repairs over a period of time. From an asset management standpoint, they’re able to to make more informed decisions on when it’s time to replace a vessel by tracking this data.

Automated custom reporting is utilized to track maintenance hours as well as vessel and cage information. This provides Cooke with the pertinent data needed to remain on top of their maintenance management needs as an innovative seafood company. Contact DPSI to learn more about how iMaint can benefit your maintenance management program.