LIQUI MOLY fills 36 million containers of engine oil and lubricants a year at one automated German plant, shipping to over 150 countries. Before the move to a modern CMMS, maintenance was purely reactive: failures fixed after the fact, Saturdays on urgent repairs, plans in Excel, spares hidden in the warehouse. Running maintenance inside the ERP had already failed. Rather than one central digital solution, the team digitised in phases without stopping production, master data first and AI last. Availability rose by 20%, roughly 70 extra production days. Four phases, in order, including the phase most plants skip and pay for later.

• Where LIQUI MOLY started: 100% reactive, binders, Excel plans, hidden spares
• Why the ERP failed as a maintenance system, and what replaced it
• Phases 1 and 2: clean asset data, QR codes, planned work orders
• Phase 3: 4,000 spare parts inventoried and linked to machines
• Phase 4: AI on clean data, 15-minute searches became 15 seconds
• Where UK plants stall: chasing AI before the data foundation