Service Operations: Delivering Flawless Installation and Commissioning Outcomes With ServiceMax
If you’ve ever worked on installing equipment in an industrial facility, you know that waiting for the cement to dry can make the difference between delivering a successful, on time, project or contending with expensive overruns and frustrating delays.
Unforeseen events are a given in any complex installation & commissioning job. As a service manager, your challenge is to turn unforeseen circumstances into events that you can plan for. To do this, you need to have visibility to your installation & commissioning crews, parts, tooling and equipment, and you need to be able to schedule (and reschedule) those resources in real-time to deliver flawless installations, even when the unforeseen happens.
If you haven’t explored Field Service Management(FSM) solutions in a while, you should take a new look. FSM solutions like ServiceMax have evolved dramatically and include powerful functionality to streamline and optimize installation and commissioning processes while enabling service managers to minimize disruptions caused by schedule changes.
How are you planning and scheduling your installation and commissioning jobs today?
- Are you planning on clunky, last-generation technology that does not give you “one stop shop” visibility into the work that needs to be executed?
- Are you still moving your job resources around on a whiteboard or on an Excel spreadsheet?
- Or maybe you rely on a scheduling engine that does not account for the difficulty of scheduling complex jobs with lots of moving pieces?
If any of these statements apply, you should investigate the advanced service management capabilities of tools such as ServiceMax and ServiceBoard, that are specifically designed to proactively manage field work with complex asset scenarios.
There are three main elements to consider and control to deliver successful installation and commissioning jobs:
- How you plan your job
- How you identify the resources you assign to your job
- How you schedule those resources effectively
ServiceMax’s comprehensive, asset-centric suite of modules and best-in-class workflows support the successful execution of installation and commissioning work by streamlining service operations while reducing implementation time to value.
Planning the job
Planning complex installation and commissioning work is no easy task: Service managers need to coordinate the availability of people, parts and resources to efficiently execute workscopes. Interdependent tasks need to be assigned to individual field technicians or rotating crews of technicians. ServiceMax supports installation work with tools and processes to efficiently plan and execute complex service work with minimum effort on the part of Service Managers and Field Technicians alike.
Execution of Checklist-Based Work
Have you struggled to incorporate punch list items into your installation workscope? Or have you sent a field technician onsite with a fat binder containing a paper-based pre-job planning checklist that needs to be filled out?
Tools such as DataGuide deliver job-specific forms and checklists to technicians so they can capture critical job data, such as punch list execution or pre-job planning checklists, in an intelligent and streamlined manner. When the data that is captured requires further action, DataGuide triggers follow-up actions and workflows. The data that is captured in DataGuide checklists is fully mineable so it can be used on its own or with data from other systems to enable real-time, intelligent decision-making.
Work Planning
For complex installation and commissioning jobs, assigning field technicians or shifts of technicians to the tasks, or activities, they need to work on can be time consuming and complicated – not to mention that as schedules and shifts change, tasks need to be reallocated to other technicians with similar skills. With ServiceMax, service managers assign work orders to field technicians. Work orders can contain multi-step work plans and interdependent tasks that can be assigned to one, or multiple technicians over the life of the work order.
With the ServiceMax Go Mobile solution, field technicians can review their assigned work orders and tasks, capture data about the work they have completed, and debrief the job once all the related tasks have been completed. The completion of tasks can also trigger the consumption of parts, so the asset Bill of Materials can be updated.
Parts & Equipment
Are you sending technicians on site with the right parts and equipment to get the job done on time? Getting the right parts and equipment onsite at the right time is critical to executing on time, on budget installations. SerivceMax drives visibility to parts across stocking locations, distribution centers, technician trucks and customer sites so you can make intelligent decisions about what parts are needed and where they should be staged to ensure successful execution of work. In addition, parts information is tracked on the Bill of Materials for the asset being installed. Changes to parts used during the installation or commissioning of the asset are visible in the “As Maintained” Bill of Materials history for that asset. This information can then be used to accurately plan future interventions. Planners also have visibility to other resources needed to execute installations, for example, the crane needed to move the asset that is being installed. The crane’s location and its availability can be tracked, scheduled and rescheduled against the job like any other resource.
Identifying the right resources
But planning complex installation and commissioning jobs is not just about having visibility to the parts needed to execute the outage. Complex jobs require agility in shifting multiple moving elements. Finding the right pool of resources with the right skills and coordinating everyone’s availability can be a daunting task: Service Crews need to be assigned to tasks that match their skillsets, and shift management for lengthy jobs is difficult to manage as workers move in and out according to availability. When the job schedule shifts, the resources allocated to that job need to shift also: ServiceBoard facilitates the process of finding the right combination of service crews with the right skillsets, and schedules them on compatible shifts. When scheduling changes are needed, the Intelligent Scheduler or Scheduling Optimization supports dispatchers in making quick changes to minimize schedule disruptions.
Scheduling the right resources at the right time
As already noted, installation and commissioning activities require perfect synchronization of complex processes with many interdependent activities and resources. A delay in any of these activities can impact the on-time delivery of the entire project and triggers the rescheduling of many or all activities and resources downstream of the delay. ServiceBoard supports dispatchers with multi day, asset-centric scheduling capability designed to reduce the effort needed to schedule complex jobs with Intelligent Scheduling capability. Where job complexity and moving parts require a higher degree of automation, the ServiceBoard Optimization Engine proposes optimized schedules based on customer SLA’s, available timeslots, resources and skills. The scheduling optimization engine continuously updates job schedules through real-time and batch optimization, ensuring that all jobs are maximizing resource utilization, even those that are running late. At the same time, scheduling optimization also frees up dispatchers to focus their attention on jobs that require the management of unique exceptions.
The ServiceMax solution is a comprehensive platform that supports efficiency in all aspects of installation and commissioning work from job planning to tracking of activities, resources and technicians that are needed to successfully install assets. Because even the best planned installation & commissioning jobs can run into problems, ServiceMax ensures that work execution is modified efficiently when unplanned events occur. Most importantly, ServiceMax does this through a powerful, integrated platform that manages workflow and scheduling of complex processes flexibly and with simple user interfaces that enhance the productivity of users and the jobs they manage.