One of our customers, PG&E, had challenges using a paper-based inspection system covering a 70,000-square-mile service area. They found it very labor intensive, there were lots of duplicate entries, inconsistent inspection criteria, difficult to see trends or identify systemic problems, and there was a general lack of data validation. Many details typically get lost in transcribing from paper to system. It’s hard to see the big picture and takes too long to act on recommendations.
What they did in just 3 months was translate all their paper definitions into Ivara EXP’s mobile application on Panasonic Toughbooks. They have condition indicators, states, task templates, standard tasks plus the definition of the corrective tasks to trigger in SAP. All the corrective work parameters are defined in SAP. They use bar coding to identify equipment being inspected which allows for flexible routing of activity. They insert work instructions for collecting a reading directly on each indicator and use feedback from the field to tune the program.
Reliability has definitely gone mobile at PG&E –they now have visibility to asset data, their SAP work orders, current and historical condition information in a disconnected mode. They are empowered to make fast and accurate maintenance decisions based on accepted best practices and real-time asset health. Here’s a link to their story: http://www.ivara.com/content/PDFs/ivara_expremote_casestudy.pdf .
Jerry Olsen and John Wysocki of PG&E recorded a webinar with all the details of their success… if you want the details on their mobile solution, request it here:
May 25th, 2010
Sandra DiMatteo
Condition Based Maintenance - Developments in EXP - Implementation Success
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