Manufacturing Reliability at Scale: How Tip Top uses MEX to keep production lines moving

Tip Top, a division of George Weston Foods, is one of Australia and New Zealand's leading bakery businesses. With approximately 4,500 employees, the company produces a diverse range of bread and bakery products under iconic brands including Tip Top, Bürgen, Golden, Abbott's Village Bakery, Big Ben, and Ploughman's Bakery.

Operating 15 bakeries, nearly 70 production lines, and an extensive network of distribution trucks and depots, Tip Top depends on reliable, well-maintained equipment to keep products moving from bakery to shelf.

The challenge

In a fast-paced, daily fresh production environment, maintenance teams need complete visibility across production and fleet assets while minimising disruptions to operations.

Tip Top's maintenance priorities are focused on:

• People, food, and environmental safety  

• Reducing unplanned downtime across production and fleet assets  

• Maintaining high levels of equipment reliability  

To achieve these goals, Tip Top needed a maintenance management solution that was easy to use, flexible, and capable of supporting operations at scale.

The solution

Tip Top uses MEX to centralise maintenance activities, proactively manage asset performance, and reduce waste across its operations.

The team uses MEX to:

• Plan and manage preventive maintenance activities  

• Capture and track unplanned work  

• Manage spare parts and inventory  

• Support equipment reliability initiatives  

• Integrate maintenance data with business analytics systems  

MEX also integrates seamlessly with Tip Top's Tableau reporting environment, giving teams greater visibility into maintenance performance and helping turn operational data into actionable insights.

The result is a more proactive approach to asset management, supporting equipment reliability while reducing waste and unplanned downtime across operations.

"MEX is easy to use, cost-effective, and simple to customise to fit our business, allowing us to get on with the job." — Tip Top

Supporting reliability across complex operations

Tip Top needed a CMMS that could support the demands of a large manufacturing operation while remaining simple for teams to use.

The business found MEX to be:

• Easy to use and customise  

• Cost-effective compared to other CMMS solutions  

• Flexible enough to fit existing maintenance processes  

• Supported by a responsive and knowledgeable team  

Today, MEX helps Tip Top manage maintenance across:

• 15 bakeries across Australia and New Zealand  

• 70+ production lines  

• An extensive fleet of distribution trucks and depots  

• Multiple maintenance teams supporting daily fresh manufacturing operations  

MEX's licensing structure also provides a cost-effective approach to scaling maintenance management across multiple sites and users.

The impact

With MEX and its cloud-based deployment, Tip Top has reduced the administrative burden of managing its CMMS while improving maintenance visibility across its operations.

The result is a maintenance platform that is easier to manage, easier to support, and better equipped to help teams focus on reliability and continuous improvement.

Since implementing MEX, Tip Top has achieved:

• Faster system performance than its previous CMMS  

• More time to focus on maintenance priorities  

• Improved visibility of maintenance activities and asset performance  

• Stronger support for reliability initiatives  

• Simplified system administration and access to responsive support