Fiberon (Fortune Brands Innovations)

Fiberon manufactures composite decking and railing products — a high-throughput consumer goods operation where extrusion and melt pump equipment runs continuously to meet seasonal retail demand. At the New London, NC facility, the maintenance team had no reliable method for detecting developing equipment failures before they became critical. The reactive maintenance model meant engineers discovered problems only after breakdowns occurred, triggering costly emergency repairs, rushed parts procurement, and unplanned production stoppages. In consumer goods manufacturing, where schedules are tied to retail cycles and demand peaks, even a few hours of unplanned downtime can disrupt fulfillment commitments, strain supply chain relationships, and erode margins across the operation.

Fiberon partnered with Augury to deploy its Machine Health solution across 40 critical machines at the New London facility. Augury's platform uses continuous vibration and ultrasound sensors installed directly on equipment, feeding machine data into predictive ML models trained on millions of hours of industrial operational data. Rather than requiring on-site data science expertise, the system delivers prescriptive diagnostics — identifying not just that a problem exists, but what it is, how severe it is, and how urgently it needs attention. This enabled the maintenance team to schedule corrective repairs during planned shutdowns rather than scrambling during active production. The deployment followed a focused pilot structure at one facility, establishing a clear ROI case before Fortune Brands Innovations committed to an enterprise-wide rollout.

Within eight months of deployment at New London, Fiberon achieved measurable impact across cost, uptime, and team adoption:

• $274,000 in total verified cost savings over the pilot period
• 178 hours of unplanned downtime avoided
• 2.5x ROI realized within the first eight months
• $56,000 saved from a single early detection of an impending melt pump failure
• 96% of AI-generated alerts acted on by the maintenance team

The 96% alert response rate reflects genuine team confidence in the system's accuracy — a common barrier in industrial AI deployments that Fiberon cleared early. Pilot results were compelling enough to drive a 25x expansion: Fortune Brands Innovations is now rolling out Augury across 1,000+ machines in 16 facilities across three countries.

• A focused single-facility pilot (40 machines) generated the proof points — $274K saved, 2.5x ROI — that justified a full enterprise expansion to 1,000+ machines.
• Prescriptive diagnostics that tell teams what is wrong, not just that something is wrong, are what drive high alert response rates and convert AI adoption into real savings.
• Track individual high-value detections: a single $56K melt pump catch can justify an entire program's cost and builds internal credibility fast.
• Consumer goods manufacturers with seasonal demand peaks carry amplified downtime risk — predictive maintenance ROI compounds precisely when production pressure is highest.
• Team trust is earned through alert accuracy, not volume; noisy systems get ignored while reliable ones achieve 96% response rates.