Background
As a global leader in low-carbon forest products, operational reliability drives Canfor’s competitive edge. The Axis site in Alabama—a modern sawmill producing 250 million board feet of Southern Yellow Pine annually—operates 64+ critical assets where every hour of uptime counts.
Opening in October 2023 as a greenfield facility, Axis presented a unique opportunity: build a world-class predictive maintenance program from day one, without the constraints of legacy systems or old habits.
Challenge
New equipment, unknown risks:
As a greenfield facility, the team had zero historical data on their brand-new machines—any unexpected failure could derail production targets while customers waited for lumber.
New equipment, unknown risks:
Experienced millwrights believed vibration sensors detected “noise” from adjacent equipment—a pervasive myth that could derail the entire program.
Every minute counted:
With production ramping up and no room for error, the team needed immediate confidence in their maintenance decisions, not months of trial and error.
The journey: Building confidence through results
Healthy skepticism demanded proof:
The maintenance team brought healthy skepticism from decades of experience with vibration monitoring. They knew previous systems had limitations and wanted proof this technology could deliver in their demanding environment.
Every prediction was validated:
The superintendent partnered with technicians to validate every prediction. When the system flagged developing issues, the team applied traditional verification methods alongside the data. Time after time, what started as subtle trends in the data became audible problems a week later—exactly as predicted.
The culture transformed in six months:
Technicians began requesting trend reports after repairs to see their impact. Production managers started requiring data before approving maintenance windows. The team evolved from reactive firefighting to scheduling repairs weeks in advance, ordering parts at standard prices instead of 34x emergency premiums. What began as one person’s vision became the entire operation’s standard—not through mandates, but through proven results.
We haven’t seen a false positive when we decide to act. Every alert we’ve investigated revealed a genuine issue that would have caused major problems if ignored.
Keys to Axis’s success
Made data visible to everyone
Email alerts reach mechanics, supervisors, and production managers—creating shared awareness and collective ownership of equipment health.
Prioritized impact over activity
The team focused on monitoring critical issues that could stop production, building credibility through meaningful victories, less important alerts were addressed over time.
Let results speak louder than mandates
Instead of forcing adoption, leadership let successful catches and prevented failures convince the team, creating organic buy-in that spread naturally across all shifts.
