Automotive Battery Manufacturing Ramp-Up
New output records within 4 months at a greenfield EV battery manufacturing site in Europe. Propelance built the maintenance function from scratch — establishing preventive maintenance culture, introducing planning and scheduling processes, and implementing CMMS-driven execution — enabling the customer to focus on production while all maintenance operations were handled by Propelance.
- Client
- Multinational
- Location
- Europe & North America
- Duration
- Manage engagement
- Industry
- Automotive / EV battery manufacturing
- 01
The factory was a greenfield investment — rapid start-up caused installation quality problems, driving reliability issues and unplanned downtime of utility systems.
- 02
The utility system operator team had no maintenance knowledge and no capacity to work with MRO — leaving critical systems without structured upkeep.
- 03
Lack of preventive maintenance culture and missing planning and scheduling processes pushed the team into constant firefighting, causing loss of production capacity and delaying the factory's ramp-up.
- 01
A long-term outsourcing partnership began — the Propelance team built the maintenance team for the customer from scratch.
- 02
The team started up maintenance processes, introduced planning and scheduling meetings with production to align priorities and reduce reactive work.
- 03
Preventive and predictive maintenance development was initiated for critical equipment, targeting the root causes of unplanned downtime.
- 04
A maintenance strategy was created for medium- and long-term development, providing a clear roadmap for operational maturity.
- 05
CMMS system utilization was introduced to bring planning and scheduling to the next level of data-driven execution.
- 01
The Propelance team took over operational responsibility for maintenance — freeing the customer's team to focus on production challenges.
- 02
Multiple commissioning quality issues were fixed — a long-term stopped factory section was restarted, saving the customer outstanding cost.
- 03
The customer reached new output records within 4 months — driven by improved reliability and shorter repair times.
Operational accountability across six areas.
Throughout the engagement we owned end-to-end maintenance operations at the European greenfield site — as part of daily work, not as outside consultants. Combined with the fast commissioning, this is what enabled the 4-month ramp-up instead of the usual years.
- 01Health and safety
- 02Organizational development
- 03Maintenance planning and scheduling
- 04Maintenance cost control
- 05Reliability-centered maintenance
- 06Asset condition assessment
In a greenfield facility, the maintenance function doesn’t emerge organically.
Establishing it as a structured discipline from day one — with planning processes, CMMS, and production alignment — is what compressed the ramp-up timeline from typical years to 4 months.
By taking full maintenance ownership, Propelance freed the customer’s team to focus exclusively on production challenges — the division of responsibility was the key enabler for the compressed timeline.
Discuss a Similar Initiative
Explore how this approach applies to your operations.