Mirjan Koolen, Author at Realworld Systems

5 Key CMMS Selection Criteria

Written by Mirjan Koolen on 4 February 2021. Posted in Blog posts.

As organisations continue to look at ways to make the workplace better, to ensure the safety of staff and consumers, standard processes and procedures are periodically checked and audited to ensure they stay current and up to date.

Such criteria are never more relevant than when large scale security operations, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, leave global imprints on how businesses operate. The Center for Disease Control and prevention (CDC) are still discovering key data points regarding the new strain of Coronavirus with the World Health Organization (WHO). A list of recommended techniques that employers can leverage to avoid the accidental spread of the virus has been outlined.

These issues do not leave any aspect of an enterprise unaffected, with asset management workers perhaps having the greatest risk of being affected due to the collaborative nature of their daily duties.

One way to ensure the safety of employees is to use your asset management tools to head the recommendations of the World Health Organization to optimise social distancing and promote the overall safety of your workforce.

The following five approaches and related features of your modern asset management software (CMMS or EAM) include a range of techniques and best practices that you in your asset management team can leverage during events such as Covid-19 to help offset risk.

1. Routine/extended environmental cleaning is encouraged through preventive maintenance procedures

You can ensure that standard cleaning is performed on time and thoroughly by leveraging preventative maintenance procedures that are created automatically on a fixed schedule, while removing any possible health risks.

Standardising processes would also create the ability to add the task that needs to be completed, and the corresponding work orders that are created. This provides the opportunity to correctly follow a set of standards to meet the growing concerns that employees take to ensure proper separation between workers and the instruments and materials used or properly sanitized before they are used again.

2. Event-based notifications assist with employee separation

To produce alerts automatically, companies should look to leverage their asset management tools. This enables workers to keep up to date with the most recent details (updates of work orders, outage of inventory, downtime of assets, etc.) without coming into contact with other staff.

If it is reported that a key piece of inventory is out of stock or that a work order is on extended hold due to safety issues, a fast and efficient way to ensure that alerts are delivered in real time is to use event based automated notifications to assist internal communications, while also minimising the danger that can be associated with health concerns such as COVID-19.

3. Mobility facilitates remote work

Because of COVID-19 concerns, businesses can run into circumstances that require workers to be separate as a precaution. Leveraging the mobile capabilities of your asset management tools or help keep work going whilst almost removing the risk of spreading any possible infection.

Thanks to key features such as real time alerts, background recordings and documentation access, enterprises can effectively have the entire lifecycle of a work order completed by several workers without anyone actually coming into contact with one another through the strategic use of the mobile asset management solution.

By allowing personnel within the company who are not asset maintenance experts to send requests for assistance, even a mobile based service requests management tools may provide additional layers of protection. And without ever needing to see anyone, they can do so, further helping in efforts to keep workers safe.

4. Access to key documentation reduces risk

Is important to be able to access essential documents, whether it be a particular engineering document or a picture of a component, while looking at additional ways to facilitate deliberate social separations.

The job will continue to complete work by allowing team members to access key documents from wherever they are, while reducing the need to visit coworkers to obtain unique information based on assets.

5. Shift management tools minimize in-person interaction

In addition to the above-mentioned tools, using the shift management instruments of your asset management will further assist in the efforts of an organisation to eliminate in person interactions.

Teams will continue to ensure both normal an essential asset maintenance is completed by adopting a phased change strategy by using a mix of automated alerts and mobile access.

While incidents such as COVID-19 outbreak often have a degree of ambiguity, one thing is certain: organisations that use set management technologies to assist in efforts to keep maintenance management professionals healthy. Especially during circumstances such as this, where they are more likely to remain ahead of the curve, enabling continued efficiencies while avoiding downtime that could be impacted due to staff health and quarantine protocols.

At Realworld Systems we have the tools to implement, resolve and care for our employees ensuring a safe period through COVID-19. If you are looking to learn more go to info@realworld-systems.com or at contact us at: +31 345 614406.

18 January 2021

Realworld Eastern Europe and CROSS selected by AFR-IX

Written by Mirjan Koolen on 2 July 2020. Posted in General news items.

CROSS selected by pan-African carrier AFR-IX to boost operational performance.

Gearing up for growth – moving from open source to centralised network inventory management

Recently, we closed a contract with a fast-growing, pan-African carrier and service provider, AFR-IX. Our new client has built an advanced, Cisco-based network to deliver connectivity services across the African continent. The portfolio includes L2/L3 services, direct internet access, international private leased circuits, as well as managed co-location services.

With a growing footprint of data centres and surging customer demand for reliable, cost-effect connectivity solutions, AFR-IX had enjoyed great success. However, managing this growing footprint began to present challenges.

In particular, the ability to deliver new services, quickly and easily, while delivering promised SLAs became increasingly difficult for AFR-IX. Both factors are key differentiators against established and incumbent providers, with legacy processes. Maintaining the operational and service agility became a key strategic goal for the leadership team.

From open source to a proven, future-proof, consolidated solution

Until recently, AFR-IX had relied on an open-source inventory management solution across its growing footprint. However, this had a number of limitations which negatively impacted operational performance – and created barriers to future growth. To retain competitive advantage, the carrier decided to invest in a new, centralised solution.

We’re thrilled to announce that CROSS has been chosen by AFR-IX, and will become the new, consolidated common inventory platform to help support the carrier’s growth and performance optimisation plans.

As a result of the deployment, all network components – switches and routers – will be integrated with CROSS. The auto-discovery tools will enable detailed information regarding resource availability and location (for example, devices, cards, ports and transceivers) to be obtained, when required – accelerating deployment times.

The project is in its early stages but will also extend to CRM integration for sales and order management, with automation planned as an additional step to create zero-touch processes.

All in all, it’s an exciting project that takes CROSS to another network operator that’s seeking to build competitive advantage – AFR-IX. Watch this space for future updates!

Groundwater Office at Water Corporation

Written by Mirjan Koolen on 25 June 2020. Posted in Blog posts, General news items.

Groundwater asset information was previously stored across multiple systems within Water Corporation. This data was managed by various business units creating duplication of information and the loss of information considered not important. Investigations relating to groundwater were thus time consuming and resource heavy creating delays in providing advice and additional time allocations/rework for each project. Further, some regulatory commitments were not being entirely met and quality assurances of the data could not be guaranteed.

The catalyst for change was caused when a production bore in the Leederville aquifer was proposed within the Whitfords Borefield to provide flexibility in Perth’s Integrated Water Supply Scheme. However, a Leederville bore had been previously been drilled at this site identifying unsuitable water quality. The report identifying the water quality was not easily accessible and only a casual conversation at the planning phase identified the issue. This resulted in a cost avoidance of ~$2,500,000 in rework associated with completing a production well in this area and saving 6-9 months in project delay.

Water Corporation investigated several products that would provide:

A central data source that could provide a ‘Source of Truth’ on hydrogeological information;
Ability to capture all information in a consistent approach (QA/QC);
Integration with the Asset Registration process; and
A tool for ongoing Asset Management and Operations.

Water Corporation identified a combination of Smallworld’s Groundwater Office and GeODin software as the preferred solution. In addition, Groundwater Office (GWO) provided the ability to link with other databases to provide a ‘One-Stop-Shop’, in particular ODSS which stores water quality and summarised operational data.

GeODin is a platform designed to aid with a consistent approach to documentation of hydrogeological and drilling data. The system provides a method by which all those involved in groundwater investigations and drilling data acquisition, analysis and reporting may remain aligned with a consistent and proper documentation standard. It also allows for consultants to have a tool for direct input of data into Water Corporations system without the need for double handling of the data.

GWO is the repository of groundwater bore/well related data which can then be utilised with other programs throughout Water Corporation. It is connected to SAP, Water Office, and ODSS to ensure there is a single point of truth for all data and has the ability to output data into specifically designed reports within GWO or other programs including Datalab and GeODin.

Even though the current migration and use of GWO is still in its infancy, significant efficiencies have already been seen on a day-to-day review of data. The biggest challenge has been aligning the data within several databases into one repository, especially where conflicting information may exist. Changes have been completed on an incremental basis: firstly inputting the data into GWO; secondly aligning with asset registration information; thirdly the inclusion of new data; and finally an iterative approach to ongoing QA/QC of data. This method has meant that while data currently may not be accurate, consistency across different systems has now occurred and allows for changes to be made in one location, GWO, which can then be reflected across the different systems.

GWO also has significant functionality that is currently not being utilised. With its highly flexible framework allowing for complex queries, the data can be interrogated in infinite ways allowing for the system to be set up for risk assessments and asset management. The ability to store specific filters allows for regular tasks to be set up and saved by more experienced administrative users, making the queries available for general users at the click of a button. Its flexibility with connecting to other databases will also allow for all data collected by Water Corporation to potentially be available within the one database.

Author: Mirjan Koolen