How a Large McDonald’s Franchise Reduced Equipment Downtime by 85% with MaintainX

Challenge: Tracking Work Orders across 22 Stores

Twenty-two McDonald’s restaurants produce a lot of work orders. Locks need to be replaced. Fryers need to be serviced. Compressors in the coolers need to be fixed. Then there are the infamous broken milkshake machines. The machines typically account for a significant amount of revenue, but they break down often.

When facilities manager, Billy Sanon, made the leap from managing one store to the entire franchise, he was still in the process of trying to improve the technology for the Cottrell Organization.

Billy and his team of five were managing the maintenance of critical equipment and other assets across all locations via spreadsheets. Despite their best attempts at organization, work orders were falling through the cracks.

Eventually, Billy turned toward a work order management system. But Billy’s phone still rang constantly with work order requests. The workload became too much for Billy and his team to handle.

With a background in tech, Billy knew it was time to look for a system that could help.

MaintainX software allows Billy and his team to create and track work orders under one system in real time and to establish standardized operating procedures across locations for specific assets and equipment.

Through the MaintainX dashboard, Billy can keep up with issues as they arise across all 22 McDonald’s restaurants. When work orders come in, Billy and his team dispatch them to the maintenance techs and track the progress of repairs and any follow-up.

MaintainX also allows teams to develop preventive and reactive maintenance plans that help with employee training. With MaintainX, Billy creates standardized operating procedures to train employees and to prevent the same issues from recurring.

For example, his HVAC systems need to be maintained consistently. Now, his store managers keep Billy up-to-date on work performed with MaintainX’s seamless work-order tracking.

MaintainX is a connected worker platform. The outdated method of tracking work orders with spreadsheets and constant phone calls is a thing of the past. MaintainX’s messaging system allows Billy to communicate with all 22 McDonald’s locations through one convenient platform.

And, when the time comes for an audit, MaintainX makes it easy with a real-time compliance trail that keeps Billy organized."It got to the point where there was just too much information and too many phone calls from staff to keep up."

Solution: Operations and Maintenance Management Software

Cottrell Organization needed to accurately track assets, procedures, and teams across its 22 McDonald’s franchise locations.

That’s when a maintenance management colleague told Billy about his experience with MaintainX. The colleague managed the maintenance program for another McDonald’s franchise group, so he felt the same pain points as Billy did. He told him how pleased he was with the MaintainX platform, and Billy decided to give it a try.

“MaintainX eliminated the need to use spreadsheets, emails, and texting."

Result: 85% Decrease in Equipment Downtime

With streamlined work orders, Mean Time to Repair (the average time to fix a broken piece of equipment) has steadily decreased since May 2020, from 400 hours to just 60 hours in September.

Since implementing MaintainX, more than 2,500 work orders have been created across all 22 McDonald’s locations. And after 10 months, 90% were completed.

Billy can now track:

• 20+ locations in real-time
• 60+ vendors, ranging from refrigeration to advertising
• 60+ different types of machine parts

Overall, MaintainX has dramatically improved the way Billy and his team work. The milkshake machines never stop flowing at the Cottrell Organization’s 22 McDonald’s locations.

"It’s been massively useful in staying on top of our maintenance without overburdening me or my phone. Without MaintainX, my phone would be ringing twice as much as it does now with maintenance requests."

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Spotlight on the Customer

Cottrell Organization is a second-generation family business based in New Jersey. The family owns 22 McDonald’s franchises in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.