Case Study | Patates Dolbec

Patates Dolbec: One CMMS, 2,000+ Assets, Three Entities and Unlimited Users

How a family-owned company in Saint-Ubalde, Quebec, centralizes maintenance across its farming operations, packing plant and distillery in Maintenance Directe

A family story, from the farm to the distillery

Patates Dolbec is a family-owned company based in Saint-Ubalde, in the Portneuf region of Quebec. Its story goes back to 1967, when Herman Dolbec acquired a potato farm of a few dozen acres from his father, Adrien. Stephan Dolbec took over in the 1990s and became the owner in 2004. Now in its third generation, the company grows thousands of acres of fresh potatoes every year, making it one of the largest potato producers in Quebec.

The company has also diversified. Founded during the pandemic by Stephan Dolbec and his partners Pascale Vaillancourt, Hugo D’Astous and Josée Petitclerc, the Ubald distillery produces a potato vodka and Vallée gins. Every step, from growing to bottling, takes place on site in a circular-economy approach: potatoes that are not sold on the fresh market are turned into spirits.

How a well-deployed CMMS transformed equipment management

The challenge

Before 2016, Patates Dolbec used another CMMS that was complex and made maintenance management heavier than it needed to be. Planned shutdowns for repairs could run long when a part was missing, and the same happened with unplanned breakdowns. As the company grew, it needed a simple tool that every team could use and that could extend to new sites without adding administrative burden.

The right technology

In 2016, after trying the Maintenance Directe demo, Patates Dolbec deployed the platform in its packing plant and then across its entire fleet of rolling equipment. The cloud-based solution spares the company from managing updates and maintenance workstations, and the centralized inventory, updated in real time, allows repairs to be planned around the parts actually in stock. Built-in forms (equipment inspections, preventive vehicle maintenance, occupational health and safety forms such as CNESST in Quebec, with WSIB and WCB equivalents elsewhere in Canada) are completed directly in the tool, which cuts paper use and builds a documented history. Ten years later, the same platform supports three entities: Cultures H. Dolbec, Patates Dolbec and, since January 2026, the Ubald distillery.

At Patates Dolbec, about 81% of work orders are preventive, a level maintained between 2025 (81%) and 2026 (82%) despite a fleet of more than 1,200 assets. The shift is most pronounced at Cultures H. Dolbec, where the preventive share rose from 22% in 2025 to 52% in 2026. The Ubald distillery, for its part, started with 71% preventive work orders within its first weeks in the system.

“Right away, we saw how simple and user-friendly the CMMS was.” Alexandre Béland, Logistics and Procurement Lead, Groupe Dolbec

The right team: local service

Patates Dolbec praises the local service of the Maintenance Directe team, whose software is developed in Quebec. “Bruno, Director of Customer Service and Operations at Maintenance Directe, is always available to answer our questions. The team takes the time to listen to our needs and does not hesitate to make changes to the system so the solution can evolve with us,” says Jessie Lachance, Continuous Improvement Coordinator at Patates Dolbec. This approach allowed the platform to grow from one plant to three entities between 2016 and 2026, with unlimited users and per-asset pricing that follows the growth of the fleet.

A solution with lasting benefits

• For Patates Dolbec, the benefits of Maintenance Directe are many:
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  More efficient inspections thanks to clear, complete forms;
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  Traceability of the full history of preventive and corrective maintenance;
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  Simpler, more efficient inventory management;
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  Higher productivity through less downtime for corrective maintenance;
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  Simpler purchasing through the link between work orders and inventory;
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  Modular pricing that adapts to the needs of the business.

How we help you succeed

1. A phased rollout: packing plant, rolling equipment, Cultures H. Dolbec, then Ubald.
2. Centralized inventory management linked to work orders, so repairs are planned around available parts.
3. Built-in forms, including occupational health and safety forms, for full traceability.
4. Local customer service, with system changes made as needs evolve.

The Patates Dolbec story shows what a simple, scalable CMMS can do for a growing family business: one platform, from the farm to the distillery.

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