FEATURE THE GREATOPTIMISER
Through leveraging technology, the FM industry is changing, enabling better customer service and increased productivity, says Alan Cambridge, CEO and Co-founder of Peacock Engineering.
FM businesses face a continuous battle between providing great customer service while at the same time keeping a tight rein on costs. Over the past few years FM operators have been turning to digital solutions such as CRM (Customer Relationship Management), EAM (Enterprise Asset Management) and FSM (Field Service Management), which can now be integrated together to provide FMs with a 360-degree view of their contracts.
These applications have in turn been expanding their scope and offering, to use clients’ data to improve productivity and profitability. As this process evolves, Asset Management and Service Management are integrated and highly automated, increasing service efficiency and feeding back to customers in real time.
Automated data analysis in the EAM will enable better predictions about likely failures or outages, triggering the maintenance, before the customer even knows there is an issue. This kind of predictive maintenance is a future state for FMs currently, but it is only around the corner, and the first FMs to enable it will change the market with a new level of customer service.
Maximo has all the capabilities to
enable predictive maintenance The market-leading EAM solution, IBM Maximo, has recently been significantly expanded, to include a series of additional applications, collectively known as Maximo Application Suite (MAS). This moves EAM further along towards the goal of Predictive Maintenance – and integration with FSM means customers immediately benefit, with faster maintenance and less downtime.
Automatic data collection Some of the apps in MAS have clear advantages for FM – for example, Maximo Monitor can collect data from remote sensors on equipment in buildings. Algorithms then analyse this data, and can spot any performance anomalies. Monitor then automatically alert users, enabling earlier and more cost-effective intervention and maintenance.
Another MAS app, Maximo Visual Inspection, enables users to build and ‘train’ their own visual models, and can compare a camera image with the model to spot anomalies. This can be used, for example, to monitor critical areas for faults, or can be used with a drone-based camera to check the exterior and roof of buildings.
Mobile solutions improve the
effectiveness of field teams Mobile EAM solutions are an essential part of the automated FSM solution – the FSM needs to be able to
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contact all field staff, to schedule and allocate work in the most effective way.
Solutions providers have also been quick to seize the opportunities provided by faster 4G and 5G mobile networks, which enable the bandwidth needed to use these systems on mobile devices. EAM solutions such as IBM Maximo now have sophisticated mobile implementations, so that maintenance workers in the field have instant access to data about assets. They can access and issue work orders from the point of work, and perform a wide range of other tasks such as inventory management, supply chain management, and equipment calibration.
Automatic, dynamic scheduling
improves reduces non-productive time Increasingly sophisticated scheduling applications, which can be fully integrated with EAM systems, now enable businesses to optimise their maintenance scheduling, by nearest available engineer, most suitable engineer, or a range of other options. Scheduling can be done manually, or completely automatically – in which case the software will dynamically rearrange appointments for all field personnel, as requirements change during the day.
This means, for example, that if an engineer is held up at one location longer than expected, the scheduling system will automatically reassign appointments to your other engineers in the most efficient way, and can also send alerts out to all clients to advise them of any changes to their appointment. Working in conjunction with a mobile EAM solution, the scheduling system has live information about the location of your field personnel, so ensures that appointments are always rearranged optimally. This minimises non-productive time, and enables you to reduce the number of field engineers, or get more done with your existing team.
Role-based Interfaces present the
right information to the right people Enterprise solutions integrators, such as Peacock Engineering, can also provide FM businesses with a combined role-based interface, and enable them to create specific interfaces for their customers. These custom interfaces utilise data from all the enterprise systems in use. Business intelligence reporting tools and dashboards display critical information and KPIs, leveraging all the data collected through the company’s work processes to deliver better customer service. FM businesses have a live view of all aspects of their contract performance in one place, with the information they need to make critical decisions.
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