Jack Daniel’s with a shot of eMaint and Fluke
16/10/2023
Back in 1864, Jack Daniel launched the first registered distillery in the USA. Today, Jack Daniel’s is part of the Brown-Forman family of brands producing and distributing spirits and wine worldwide.
Jack Daniel Cooperage, the facility where barrels or casks have been made since 1864, creates barrels for Jack Daniel’s and other brands within Brown-Forman, producing thousands of barrels per week, and has teamed up with eMaint and Fluke vibration sensors.
The facility requires a well-trained team to track and analyse maintenance needs to increase productivity and ensure a smooth, efficient production process and Martin Nelson, a Maintenance and Engineering Manager at Jack Daniel Cooperage, and his team of repair and preventative maintenance technicians are responsible for just that.
Martin and his team use eMaint computerised maintenance management system (CMMS) software and two types of vibration sensor from Fluke Reliability to keep the facility up and running.
By connecting condition monitoring sensors with the maintenance software, the Jack Daniel Cooperage team can automatically generate work orders when their equipment exceeds temperature and vibration thresholds. As a result, they have improved their preventative maintenance (PM) and moved into predictive maintenance as well.
While the whiskey is made with Jack Daniel’s time-honoured and time-consuming process, the cooperage uses state-of-the-art technology to make its barrels. “The number one cost that goes into a whiskey is the barrel,” said Martin.
To meet Jack Daniel’s exacting standards, Martin’s team needed to test and prove the value of various prototypes of custom barrel-making equipment for different parts of the process. In addition to the machinery used to make the barrels themselves, the cooperage has an extensive dust collection system that needed to be taken into account. All of it requires a strong attention to detail and a firm commitment to an asset management strategy.
Every technician on the team is now using eMaint. The features they rely on most are the work orders and inventory management. They have customised PMs to include pictures with captions explaining what needs to be done.
“I have several PM reports that autogenerate to me and give me the status of open preventative maintenances, overdue preventative maintenances and preventative maintenance completion percentage, which is huge,” explained Martin. “We are slated to have 100% preventative maintenance completion on a weekly basis.”
The work order system in eMaint has been a crucial tool for the cooperage in helping to plan and prioritise the work that is carried out. Martin continued: “One of the nice things about eMaint is I can differentiate work orders. I segregate all of the project stuff out versus what is going on in real time.”
Martin said he uses several different categories of work orders, including root cause and corrective action (RCCA), safety work, corrective maintenance, total productive maintenance (TPM) and emergency maintenance. Identifying what is most urgent, for example, or what will require specialised parts or labour, helps the team ensure they have the resources they need when and where they need them.
Martin revealed: “Working with the developers of eMaint has been a good experience overall and I have been told that some of the things we are doing have never been done before. So, what is always the fun part is the development of different processes to help mitigate the risk of downtime and make a business unit stronger. And when you are stronger, you are more profitable.”
The revamped inventory management system at the Jack Daniel Cooperage has been so successful that other facilities within Brown-Forman will implement it as well.
“The buy-in comes when you demonstrate the effectiveness of mitigating downtime and start showing them the uptime,” added Martin.
In addition to using eMaint, the cooperage also uses two types of vibration monitoring sensor from Fluke Reliability. The sensors and software work together to keep the maintenance team updated on how equipment is operating. “I like the way that it does the reporting and auto-generates the work orders when it is out of its threshold, over the temperature or vibration,” said Martin.
VibGuard vibration sensors offer advanced alarm tools to monitor for specific failures. They collect several different types of data. The cooperage also uses other Fluke vibration sensors. With access to real-time machine health data in their computerised maintenance management system, maintenance teams can advance their connected reliability journey. Connected reliability is about centralising data from different systems and tools to make it readily accessible and actionable. Pairing sensors and software makes a more holistic approach possible, where teams are able to plan rather than just react.
“I am running Fluke vibration sensors on a lot of my A-class equipment,” said Martin. “Now we are not only getting our preventative maintenance where it needs to be, we have also moved into the predictive maintenance side.”
Approximately 31 staves, narrow lengths of wood, go into making each barrel. The staves are precisely shaped on all sides with the cooperage’s specialised equipment. Thousands of barrel staves are processed each shift.
“Since we are in the woodworking business, we have a very vast dust collection system and if that dust collection system goes down, it shuts the operation down,” said Martin.
Due to this, the cooperage now also uses vibration sensors on the gearboxes, blowers, bearings and motors that are part of the dust collection system to ensure a holistic maintenance strategy.
With a focus on continuous improvement and connected reliability utilising Fluke Reliability’s solutions, the Jack Daniel’s Cooperage has overhauled its maintenance practices and experienced so much success that its strategies are being adopted throughout Brown-Forman.
