There was a time when managing corporate physical assets was, by nature, a time-consuming process. Technicians had to pick up their tasks at the office and then return their forms at the end of the day with a lot of paperwork, including timesheets and repair request forms.
Now, there is a better way. By becoming mobile, the company can save time, money and resources. Besides, you get higher quality data, resulting in longer asset life and more information for decision making. You can capture data more completely than ever before while reducing errors, improving compliance and compiling a library of auditable data in real-time.
Mobility Management in MES
The implementation of an Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) solution is a crucial element in the right direction for any company with a large number of physical assets: premises, facilities, equipment, etc.
There are many technical and functional aspects to be considered when selecting an EAM software. One of those aspects that we must ensure is the mobility capabilities of the system, which will provide us with additional cost reduction through increased productivity and higher data quality.
Engineers, field technicians and other employees and partners involved in asset management will then be able to use smart mobile devices to do their job and within an optimised environment. These mobile solutions must be able to leverage device-specific capabilities where appropriate and necessary, such as photos and speech-to-text features. In this way, mobile solutions enable technicians to capture the right information at the right time with the highest accuracy and maximum productivity.
In the EAM tools environment, mobility solutions allow you to extend system functionality outside the office and into the field, so that frontline staff, for example, execute work orders, record drill-down activities, create work requests, and view and manage assets.
Checklist tool for performing tablet inspections – Retain
Better and faster
Mobile workflows are introducing significant improvements in asset management, for example, with mobile solutions that can ensure that emergency systems and critical assets are properly and regularly inspected. They can even provide field teams with key resources at their fingertips, such as instructional videos and diagrams that help them meet the necessary compliance requirements.
Field service
The use of mobile devices in asset management helps the work team to control the number of actions it takes each month and improves customer satisfaction while reducing the time spent on administrative tasks in the office.
By eliminating paper forms and notes, along with the time and cost of printing, delivering and processing them, teams save time and money while collecting more valuable data.
Digital forms also allow teams to capture rich data, which can include everything from photos to audio recordings, timestamps and more, for greater visibility in the field.
Although connectivity is now extensive and technicians can send real-time data to the system from any location, the system must have synchronisation mechanisms in place so that if there is no connection at any given time, data is automatically sent as soon as connectivity is restored.
Management of installations
Mobile solutions make it easier to track and manage any number and variety of assets. Calendar integrations and automated dispatching help ensure that periodic inspections and preventive maintenance are performed, extending the life of assets and minimising downtime.
On the high-tech side, you can also leverage the Internet of Things (IoT) to automatically request corrective maintenance. Strategically placed sensors can automatically trigger service requests when they detect a piece of equipment in need of repair and can collect wear data for complete visibility in the field to support more accurate maintenance schedules.
Analytics
You can’t properly manage what you don’t have information about, and in a constantly changing world, that means collecting more data, faster, and using it to make better decisions in an informed way.
Analysis engines produce increasingly accurate results as they have more data, so to uncover trends and root causes of critical problems, it is important to load them with consistent and detailed data from assets in the field. Custom dashboards and automated reports can then monitor what is most important, as efficiently as possible.
The use of mobile forms means that your data is consistently formatted, helping to make data analysis as accurate as possible.
