Barrett Steel

Barrett Steel, one of the UK's largest independent steel stockholders, operates across 28 geographically dispersed sites — a footprint that made coordinated asset management exceptionally difficult. In metals distribution and processing, unplanned equipment downtime directly disrupts order fulfilment and throughput, with consequences that cascade through a just-in-time supply chain. With no connected view of asset health across sites, maintenance teams operated reactively: responding to failures after they occurred rather than preventing them. This reactive posture meant higher repair costs, longer mean time to recovery, and chronic uncertainty about equipment availability — all compounding across a network of 28 facilities with no shared operational intelligence.

Barrett Steel partnered with Rockwell Automation to deploy ThingWorx IIoT as the asset connectivity and monitoring layer, integrated with Fiix CMMS for work order management and maintenance execution. ThingWorx connected equipment across all 28 sites into a single visibility platform, streaming real-time condition data — vibration, temperature, operational state — that had previously been invisible to central teams. Fiix translated that data into structured maintenance workflows: condition-based alerts automatically generated work orders, eliminating the manual hand-offs that typically delayed intervention. The combined stack created a closed-loop system where asset health signals directly drove maintenance scheduling, shifting the organisation from calendar-based and failure-triggered maintenance toward condition-based, predictive intervention across the full site network.

The deployment moved Barrett Steel from a predominantly reactive maintenance posture to 90% proactive maintenance across all 28 connected UK sites — a fundamental operational shift. Equipment health data now flows continuously from every site, enabling maintenance teams to schedule interventions during planned windows rather than scrambling after failures. Key outcomes include:

• 90% proactive maintenance rate achieved across 28 sites
• 28 UK sites connected into a single asset monitoring platform
• Reduced unplanned downtime through condition-based intervention before failures occur
• Improved equipment utilisation through better scheduling aligned to actual asset condition
• Maintenance teams transitioned from reactive firefighting to structured, data-driven workflows

• Scale amplifies IIoT value: in multi-site operations, condition data from one facility informs maintenance decisions at all comparable facilities — the network effect grows with each connected site.
• Technology alone does not reach 90% proactive maintenance: the cultural shift — getting maintenance teams to trust and act on condition alerts rather than waiting for failures — is as critical as the platform itself.
• CMMS integration is the critical link: connecting asset monitoring to work order generation eliminates the manual gaps where alerts go unactioned; without it, visibility does not translate to prevention.
• Start with connectivity, then optimise: establishing a common data layer across sites is the prerequisite; analytical and predictive capabilities compound once that foundation is in place.