Redimix Cuts Year-Over-Year Maintenance Costs by 53% With MaintainX

Top Takeaways

• 66% decrease in winter maintenance spend since implementation two years ago.
• 53.9% decrease in year-over-year maintenance spend.
• Nearly 1,800 maintenance work orders completed since implementation.

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When Greg Wortman started as operations manager at Redimix Companies in 2021, there were several impressive challenges on deck. As the leading concrete supplier in New Hampshire and Southern Maine, they'd been selected to help modernize the United States Navy's oldest continually operating shipyard in Kittery, Maine. Redmix committed to providing about 160,000 cubic yards of concrete over six years for the project, making it the second largest ready-mix concrete job in the history of Northern New England.

Operations managers are used to delivering on massive plans and driving growth with lean teams—and Greg’s first months at Redimix were no exception. “I'd only been in the job for six months before I lost my entire maintenance team,” explains Greg. One employee left the company to pursue a new opportunity, while another went on extended leave due to an injury. “And my guidance from my boss was, ‘well, the plants still have to produce.’” 

Like many organizations, the company relied on institutional knowledge stored on sticky notes, in Excel spreadsheets, and in experienced employees’ memories. That meant if Redimix lost team members, critical information could disappear with them.

With the motivation to quickly assemble a central knowledge repository, Greg’s search for the right computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) began. “I said, if I'm going to have to start from scratch, I'm going to build it the right way, and I'm going to make sure whoever’s in the seat behind me doesn't have to experience that.” 

Challenges

Knowledge gaps

A major challenge at Redimix was the lack of access to documentation and consistent training. 

Greg needed a solution that could help the company quickly and properly train employees according to original equipment manufacturer (OEM) specifications. “When consistent training doesn’t happen, we deviate from best operational practices. This makes mistakes more likely,” Greg says. “Failure to invest in your own people is prohibitively expensive. When you can’t maintain equipment yourself, you’re forced to pay emergency rates to subcontractors who may not know how to properly fix it.”

To train maintenance employees, the company needed a system to house standard operating procedures, plant maintenance documents, OEM schematics, and parts catalogs. 

“I wanted information out of people's heads,” Greg explains. “I wanted an evergreen system so it wouldn’t matter if I left or if my maintenance people left.”

No home for data

Redimix also wanted a way to gather quality data that could foster a preventive maintenance culture. 

The team hoped to collect information that could empower more cost-efficient decisions—such as the cost of completing certain tasks, common equipment problem areas, or the cost of repairing versus replacing a piece of equipment. They needed a place to house this data and a way to access it with ease.

Vendor and inventory uncertainty

To address unplanned expenses, Redimix sought a solution that could give them more insight into their inventory and vendor relationships. “Not having parts on-hand for your durable goods and not knowing who a preferred vendor is can lead to expensive shipping for emergency parts.”

“As an operations person, there's nothing worse than to have something go down and then not have the part on hand to fix it,” Greg says. “The last thing I want to do is to go to my boss and say, ‘I don't have these components on hand, and it's a backlog of three weeks, so now this asset can't make us profit.’”

Choosing MaintainX

Putting mobile first

When Greg started his CMMS search, usability was at the top of his list of requirements. “The president of our company’s guidance to me was simple: ‘Greg, make sure you get a system that works—people have to use it. People have to want to use it.’”

To promote adoption across the organization, Greg looked for a solution that would feel intuitive for team members with varying levels of technical expertise. He found the user-friendly interface they needed in MaintainX. “As long as you know how to take a picture on an iPhone and how to type in a Word document, you can use MaintainX,” Greg says.

He also wanted to empower all employees to quickly access and enter data in the system—especially techs who weren’t sitting at a desk. MaintainX’s mobile-first platform and offline capabilities made it easy for Redimix employees to embrace the new technology. “I spend a lot of my time on the desktop, but all my plant superintendents and the maintenance techs are on the mobile app,” he explains. “I wanted a system that they could use.”

A knowledge hub for consistent training

Since implementing MaintainX, Redimix has standardized their procedures with a central knowledge repository. “We've used the software to build out standard operating procedures for our employees so they all know how to operate and repair each piece of machinery the same way.”

In a challenging labor market with a shortage of skilled manufacturing talent, having a single source of truth for all procedures also helped Redimix expand their applicant pool. Before MaintainX, they were limited to hiring techs who already had specialized training. “I can now go hire somebody who has mechanical capabilities, and then I can train them because I have my system built out,” Greg explains.

Better inventory tracking

Redimix was also drawn to MaintainX’s comprehensive solution for inventory management. With easy access to accurate, up-to-date information on parts and vendors, the team can now respond more quickly if they face equipment failures. 

This solution helps Greg drive more cost-efficient repair decisions, too. “We’ve been able to mitigate our lack of inventory accounting and uncertainty on vendors through MaintainX,” Greg explains. “I can see in real time where inventory is, and also be able to know who our preferred vendors are. Then I can see who has the part available the quickest and at the best cost.”

From firefighting to fire prevention

MaintainX’s preventive maintenance and work order features led to better resource planning and more consistent scheduling for Redimix’s maintenance team. 

Before implementing MaintainX, techs were jumping from problem to problem and running inefficiently between sites. The CMMS now gives the team a high-level view of what’s happening at each plant, helping them prioritize their workloads. “The scheduling portion of this software was a massive win for us—there were no more dumpster fires.” 

Results: Decreasing costs through optimization

Greg advises operations managers in his shoes to shift their focus away from traditional cost-cutting measures and toward maximizing efficiency. 

“It’s not about cost cutting,” Greg says. “It’s about training your team and maintaining your equipment so that you don’t incur the costly downtime.”

Due to factors like better training, inventory control, and forecasting, Redimix has decreased winter maintenance costs by 66% since implementing MaintainX two years ago. From 2023 to 2024, they also reduced maintenance spend by 53.9%.

Working smarter is easier

Prior to MaintainX, the team didn’t have a clear idea of how many work orders they’d opened or completed, and they struggled to track each work order’s status. Redimix is now able to quantify their efficiencies. To date, the company has completed nearly 1,800 maintenance work orders with MaintainX. 

“We’ve done more maintenance than we’ve ever done before—with a significant cost reduction,” Greg says. “This means we’ve been able to expand our profit margin.” 

Quality data at the team’s fingertips

MaintainX’s reporting features were critical to streamlining Redimix’s operations. Greg can now track where the budget is going—and understand why. 

A primary focus for Redimix is increasing Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and minimizing Mean Time to Repair (MTTR). MaintainX is helping the team gain deeper insight into these key performance indicators. Using the dashboards, Greg can easily view hours of planned versus unplanned downtime, as well as preventive work orders versus reactive work orders.

“If you're in operations, your number one metric, in my opinion, is OEE. We never had tools in place to accurately track it, but we do now with MaintainX.” 

Redimix also worked with the MaintainX team to build custom databases for additional productivity metrics. “We’ve found it useful to track labor costs through MaintainX—I’ve been able to build a database for how much it costs on average to complete certain tasks. It allows me to forecast my R&M spend with a higher degree of accuracy.”

Plus, with MaintainX, this critical data is no longer buried in a series of spreadsheets. “I don't have to dig through a dozen reports,” Greg says. “If I want to pull the data up on my phone right now, I can take a look at all of those dashboards with the click of a button.”

Redimix: Looking ahead

MaintainX has been a game-changer for Redimix’s operations, and Greg looks forward to watching how the evolution of CMMS technology will continue to enrich the maintenance operations space. “I've been in seven different industries over the last 10 years. And it's amazing how many of them still use spreadsheets. It's 2025—that's not going to work anymore. I’m excited to have the intuitive software at my fingertips and to see how much value it's bringing us.”

When it comes to other industry innovations, Greg is curious about sensor technology’s ROI and its potential to take operations to a predictive level of maintenance. 

He’s also inspired by emerging AI tools and the many ways this technology could save time and expense for operations professionals. “Say I have more plant network than I need. Can I use AI tools to look at customer demand, the total number of projects, and downtime requirements, and then help me identify the best times to bring plants down for maintenance while protecting our profitability?”

As Greg continues to keep an eye on new technology to improve operations at Redimix, he encourages others in the space to embrace this spirit of innovation—baby step by baby step. “Don’t be afraid to take a chance. Your company and its shareholders are expecting you to find ways to increase profits,” Greg says. “Start small, build with easy wins, and leverage software like Maintain X to help you carry that load.”