Your job as a maintenance manager starts and ends with keeping the things you manage operational at all times. Preventive maintenance logs on spreadsheets, whiteboards, or paper isn’t enough these days. Smart maintenance is disrupting the playing field and it requires digital transformation with a high level of automation.
Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) that is integrated with Internet of Things (IoT) applications can provide structure, flexibility, and communicative and analytical speed. Once the IoT is deployed, two-way communication between supervisors and technicians now becomes three-way communication initiated by assets bringing real-time location, utilization, and performance data back into your enterprise.
Scheduling maintenance activities becomes more efficient and cost effective with the IoT. Financial drains transform into revenue gains when the IoT is used to identify, prioritize, schedule, and automate work orders using real-time data and the proper lifecycle management for each piece of equipment. Your technicians need a comprehensive view of each work order before performing maintenance activities.
Here are six key areas of work order optimization that IoT-enabled smart maintenance enhances with operational efficiency:
Asset. Provide complete details of what asset needs to be serviced and what type of job needs to be done on each work order.
Worker. Before assigning a work order, identify and allocate work orders based on the skillset(s) needed to perform maintenance on the assigned asset, how many technicians are needed, and how long it will take to complete the job.
Location. To avoid wasting time or sending your technician to the wrong location, provide mapping and navigation to where the asset is located. You can also use geofences for verification of sales or service.
Time. Optimize scheduling to ensure technicians are available and that the work order can be completed at the scheduled time. You can also benefit from coordinating activities between sales and service.
Tools, Equipment, and Materials. Make sure technicians have the right tools, equipment, or parts needed to complete the work order issued.
Information. Provide digital operating manuals, detailed instructions, parts and inventory, and work specifications in one place so that technicians rely less on memory or web searches.
Portions of this blog are based on the work of Tim Kister, Senior Planning and Scheduling SME with Life Cycle Engineering on Maintenance Work Planning: 5 Elements to Consider.
