Asset-intensive organizations have traditionally been slower to evolving digital-first practices. Following the shake-up of COVID-19, business decision makers need to build an effective mobile strategy to reduce downtime, streamline processes and improve communications. Prometheus Group’s Derek Shickel, Engineering Operations Manager shares how companies can build competitive advantage and survive the crisis by stepping up the pace of collaboration.
As the pace of digital transformationOpens a new window continues to accelerate, it’s changing the way every business operates. When it comes to enterprise asset management, organizations are in a race to catch up and digitize their maintenance functions to improve performance and profitability. Minimizing downtime, maximizing availability, and predicting equipment failure are the keys to optimizing efficiency. An effective mobile strategy is now an essential component for asset-intensive organizations as they undertake a digital transformation.
Optimizing maintenance technicians, supervisors, warehouse managers, and operation teams are of paramount importance but difficult to execute for many companies. These workers juggle multiple priorities — usually emergencies — across several sites and require faster response times and better data accessibility from the field. This is where an effective mobile strategy can help improve efficiency, communicationOpens a new window , and productivity. However, asset-intensive organizations struggle to understand how to optimize their mobility strategy to reduce downtime, streamline processes, enhance the quality of data, and improve decision-making with the ultimate goal of increasing time on tools.
Here are five tips for asset-intensive organizations to optimize mobility.
1. Streamline and Configure Work Processes
Rather than adopting a “one-size-fits all†approach, mobility solutions need configuring to specific job roles or tasks. Having a replicable, intuitive interface, and prompts to fit job roles, functions, and locations makes the solution easier for workers to learn and adopt.
When workflows support end user’s roles and needs, standardization becomes easier as employees don’t feel forced to find a workaround. By tailoring the interface, it increases the adoption of mobility solutions, which will improve the quality of data and, ultimately, decision making.
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2. Capture Data at the Source
Poor data quality is the enemy of effective decision-making. Maintenance technicians should capture data throughout the day with mobile devices. If you wait until the end of a shift, there is more room for human error. Incorrectly remembering time entries on start/stop times, work order completion times, and calibration numbers for equipment are just a few ways that human error can lead to costly mistakes. You need to capture information throughout the workday to ensure your team is receiving accurate information. Remember, with poor data, productivity levels can go awry. Real-time data capture helps prioritize critical tasks, allowing plant workers to work on the most up-to-date tasks or activities. Improving current work processes relies heavily on entering data at the time of the activity.
With a mobile device, users can adjust priority tasks, work orders, and schedules. It also alleviates the time traditionally spent correcting decisions based on imperfect data. This ensures more accurate decision-making. There are multiple associated benefits with real-time, online/offline mobile functionality:
- Plant managers can optimize productivity, inventory, and costs
- Supervisors can work with schedulers to set more accurate times around preventative maintenance vs. reactive maintenance
- Superintendents can better oversee their maintenance teams to make sure all jobs are being completed on time.
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3. Don’t just Capture Data; Analyze it!
There is no point in merely capturing data in real-time; you must be able to analyze it to support better decision making. Maintenance managers need to evaluate a range of information as they review budgets, work productivity, and the length of time allocated for shutdowns, turnaround, and outages. Thus, this requires managers and supervisors to have a real-time view of schedule compliance or backlog trends. A mobile solution makes it easier to capture these data points and improve data integrity, creating a more reliable source of truth.
4. Communicate and Collaborate
Technology can help improve communications and collaboration Opens a new window within and between teams irrespective of location. Departments rely on each other to complete specific tasks, such as operations and maintenance, with permitting or warehouse management and maintenance with inventory. Therefore, they need technology that facilitates this. To help with the adoption of a mobile solution, it must provide workers with a digital space to collaborate from any location. It should provide a plant or facility with easy access to data from one single source of truth without the need to re-enter data before someone back at the office can view it.
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5. Know your Blind Spots
Building a more efficient workflow means knowing what processes need revision across job functions. Technicians, production managers, permit writers, and management all must understand what enables their teamsOpens a new window to work efficiently. For many plants and facilities, even searching for an accessible computer wastes valuable time. Time is also lost traveling to and from offices with computers, traveling to get to the next job, aligning paperwork, and waiting in line at the permit hut. By going mobile, these issues are eliminated, which in turn improves operations, identifies slowdowns, and drives up wrench time.
As heavy asset industries strive to increase efficiency and productivity, integrating an effective mobile strategy is essential. By adopting these five tips, organizations will optimize their mobility strategyOpens a new window , helping to refine and streamline processes and eliminating inefficiencies that increase wrench time.
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