Applying automation to the maintenance lifecycle makes it easier to ensure a right work/right time approach to maintenance, reducing the need to put more people in the field. |
Use of automation in these areas effectively reduces field crew safety issues, and significantly reduces the time and cost of repairs. By reducing the number of truck rolls necessary, automated smart device maintenance and management also minimizes environmental impact by reducing truck emissions and repair equipment failures. And when truck rolls are necessary, especially in the case of planned or unplanned shutdowns, operators can automatically generate a repair plan with the required steps noted, right down to step-by-step instructions for opening, closing and tagging devices.
Automation can assist with knowledge transfer issues, as well. As highly experienced, veteran employees continue to age out of the workforce, it is more important than ever to capture that knowledge and expertise before it is lost to the company. By automating the capture of details such as labor estimates, equipment used, safety information, maintenance history, job process and other notes, job templates become a formal storehouse of knowledge for any task that needs to be carried out. Automated planning, job templates and work order schedules can increase proactive work and workforce efficiency, and maximize the value of work and assets while reducing expenses.
Maximizing Financial Performance
Water utilities dedicate substantial revenue and personnel to assets, all of which must be installed, tracked, maintained, repaired and replaced proactively in order to maintain operational efficiency. By automating objective data analysis as a core business process, they can gain greater actionable insight than was previously available from subjective or observed assessment and intuition. Using algorithm-based and predictive analytics, utilities can capture information from numerous, seemingly unrelated data sets, consolidate it, and run it through multiple analytical models that will identify correction anomalies or causal linkages that would not have been evident through subjective or observed assessment. This, in turn, can fuel actionable work lists that correct or prevent cost, reliability or safety issues.
In turn, the automation of these business process tasks aids in maximizing the utility’s financial performance and ensuring business integrity: by being able to track costs by asset, project, work order, components, process and other cost summaries, the utility can better optimize budgets, evaluate expenses versus capital expenditures, and maintain and ensure regulatory compliance.
Improving Customer Satisfaction
A more efficient, proactive approach to asset performance management and asset reliability in turn ensures two important factors to customers: water quality and affordability. Being able to put the customer first by proactively notifying them of planned shutdowns and keeping them informed when unplanned shutdowns need to occur to repair or replace an asset have been shown to improve customer satisfaction and increase customer engagement and dialogue.
About the Author: Brad Williams is vice president of industry strategy for Oracle Utilities.
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