Swiss company Barry Callebaut processes more than 350,000 tonnes of cacao beans into about 50,000 tonnes of high-quality chocolate and chocolate products every year. To stay ‘best in class’, it was necessary to formulate a clear unequivocal maintenance strategy. However, every European production site had its own local maintenance team that constantly strove for far-reaching production optimization. The focus was usually on availability and lower maintenance costs. PDM was brought in to set up and introduce a single European maintenance strategy, optimize the maintenance processes at local level, and implement a cost monitoring system at local and European level.