PPM Visit Timeliness

Concise PPM PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENT reporting for your customers.

The “visit timeliness” refers to the condensing of each visit so that similar tasks on similar assets are grouped into one “status”. Statuses are COMPLETED ON-TIME, COMPLETED LATE, OVERDUE and PLANNED. Visits can be reviewed by building or site – for instance a visit to perform a Quarterly Inspection on 4 boilers at the same site on the same day, would be measured as 1 item.

In the software screenshot, each coloured square indicator shows the timeliness for as task performed upon multiple assets. The green squares show the visit was completed on time, dark green shows visits completed late, red squares are for overdue tasks, and orange a planned.

PPM Job Compression

Simplify PPM Job Paperwork and Updates. If you are required to keep a per asset job history, PPM jobs can still be compressed such that all tasks of the same type, for the same building and on the same day are grouped together. No additional data is required to use this mechanism. When such jobs are updated, records for all assets in the group are updated.

PPM INHERITANCE

New assets to inherit the PPM tasks of similar existing assets. After adding new assets, a single click per asset invokes a mechanism whereby you set a start date and contractor, and the software generates tasks for the asset automatically. The process works by inheriting PPM Tasks from other similar assets, and the graphic indicators for the PPM Task Dates can be seen immediately.

PPM Documents

Track Asset details using your own Documents. If you group assets together for simplification, such as an example PPM Task being “Quarterly check on all fire extinguishers in the building”, additional details can be kept in documents such as Excel spreadsheets, which are tied to the PPM Task, and can be opened with a single click. PPM Documents also form part of the Customer Document Management mechanisms.

Smartphone Real-time Job Updates

Service Providers remotely indicate Response and Completion in Real Time. Using FastTrack Mobile for Smartphone, service providers receive work instructions and perform updates on their iPhones, Blackberries and Android Smartphones. This means accurate LIVE data, less time in the office, and less work for back-office staff. Customer completion signatures can also be captured.

Semi-automatic PPM Plan Generation

Simply assign our ASSET TYPES to your ASSET REGISTER and FastTrack PPM will generate the PPM Plan. Based on a known range of building asset types, FMDirect can provide the PPM Processes necessary to carry out planned maintenance.

The PPM Processes are associated with asset types, which are then assigned to your assets. The last step is to provide a PPM cycle start date and default service provider for each asset, and then FastTrack PPM will co-ordinate all the data and generate a full PPM Plan, including forecasted PPM Task Dates.

Job Completion by Smartphone

A ”one-touch job completion” by engineers on site, has long been an aim for resource-sensitive service providers. One of the problems has been the cost of PDA’s, and the fact that they become obsolete quite quickly. Operating system rationalisation in the Smartphone world now means that mainstream apps can be provided for almost all Smartphones.

Fast Track Mobile from FMDirect complements existing Windows and Web solutions, to provide a low-cost solution for mobile staff. Engineers receive new jobs as soon as they are issued, and job status changes (such as Responded To and Completed) can be achieved with a click of a finger (or thumb!). If the Smartphone has a draw capability, such as with a touch screen or stylus, end user customers can also SIGN the job there and then.

Fast Track Mobile works with iPhone, Blackberry and Android (contact FMDirect for version details), and works with Wifi and Internet connections, and also when no connection is available.

Control Job Costs with SCHEDULES OF RATES

Using pre-loaded schedules of rates is becoming a popular way to control job costs, and can be used to accurately forecast contractual costs for both existing and new contracts.

Utilising your own rates and tasks, a national schedule of rates, or your own customised version, exact tasks and costs can usually be found in seconds, leading to accurate costing and speedy distribution of instructions to the right staff member or service provider.

Level of Detail
The contents and pricing of the Schedule of Rates (SOR) tasks can be broadly descriptive, or extremely detailed – you just match the detail level to your requirements.

Margins and Contracts
Utilising the margin mechanisms with different mark-up calculation methods, the same SOR task can be used to derive different costings based on contract margin variations.

Benefits of Schedule of Rates based work tracking
* Add your own Task Descriptions and COSTS
* Find standard and non-standard tasks IN SECONDS
* Very low DEPLOYMENT COSTS
* Scale up to multiple CONTRACTS with multiple MARGINS

CAPEX or OPEX?

Utilising Hosted Systems, or Software-as-a-Service, is becoming more and more popular as organisations look to avoid expensive capital expenditures (CAPEX). A trend is to reduce costs by paying for systems out of operational expenditure (OPEX). Saving on large outlays is one of several advantages to be gained from using hosted solutions.

Benefits of hosted systems:

* NO CAPEX (Capital Expenditure) Required
* NO BLESSING from IT Required
* NO DELAYS – use your system within days
* NO HIGH COSTS – pricing typically starts from £35 per user per month
* NO DEPLOYMENT COSTS at all?

Hosted Solutions

The cost of hosted solutions has steadily reduced to where they are being considered by more and more organisations. The main benefit seems to be outsourced IT resources. "On-Demand" Room Booking and Help Desk systems can be “turned on” for users with minimal project assistance from corporate managers, and the number of licenced users can be varied monthly, according to needs.

PPM Preparation – why spreadsheets?

Many managers and consultants who have a great deal of experience in the preparation of PPM plan data, insist on preparing the base data for PPM systems (asset and procedure pairing, start date and cycle, service provider) in a spreadsheet. Spreadsheets are undeniably convenient, but most of the managers and consultants being described would say that preparation of plan data in a spreadsheet is ONLY way.

It’s quick, similar plans can be copied, and whole sections can be cut and pasted. This sounds good, but it’s all prone to error, the type of error which may not reveal itself until the plan is live.

If base and plan data is entered directly into a system which is back-ended by a professional database such as SQL Server, most of the errors which occur in a spreadsheet can be precluded, because the database simply won’t allow them. The application should provide any further required protection against bad data.

The best PPM systems also have time-saving mechanisms, such as creation of Tasks and Task Dates by groups of assets. Essential an expert user would be saying “create the 28-day inspection task for all the air handlers in the specified building, to start on 1st July” or “all the assets in this room are to have their quarterly inspection, starting on 2nd July”.

Fine-tuning can be done later (often visually, as in the case of staggered start dates), but creating the plan in this way completely prevents the bad data that creation in spreadsheets can allow.

Fully Automatic PPM?

The analysis to determine whether fully automatic PPM is beneficial, or “a good idea”, runs the gamut from common sense to philosophy. “We won’t have to do anything once it’s set up!” cry the proponents, while the worriers wonder “if it’s actually fully automatic, how will the users remember how to use it?”

There are many opinions to consider, but this doesn’t alter the fact that the technology for fully automatic PPM, including distribution of instructions by email, is already here.

By pairing assets and PPM processes and giving them start dates and cycles (PPM Tasks), server-based services can periodically apply lead times for forecasted dates (future PPM Task Dates without jobs), and the jobs themselves. In practical terms, this might mean checking every hour for dates coming due up to 6 months into the future, and jobs coming due within the next two weeks.

Turn it loose and put your feet up?

Motorway miles, train hours, climate change and webinars!

All organisation refine their operations, so the search for better systems is non-stop. New software packages to automate time-consuming processes, improved software to integrate new techniques and operating system advantages, etc., are fairly common reasons to research new software. What usually happens? The best matching software systems are reviewed on the web, and then the companies are invited to present and discuss.

Thousands of motorway miles and hundreds of train hours are gobbled up moving people around the country, and any potential climate change benefits associated with travel reduction are almost always ignored.

The other approach is to attend “webinars” or “web seminars”, which can be presentations to groups, or one-on-one. Perhaps the best scenario is that the prospective buyers group around a PC and large-ish monitor, and the presenter uses GoToMeeting or Webex to “reveal his desktop” to the group, as if he or she was in the same room. If there has to be a last-minute postponement, little damage is done, and little inconvenience caused. And the travel reduction is good for the Earth!

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Helpdesk & PPM Work Locations and Mapping

Helpdesk & PPM work locations can often be made clearer, by showing a map to operators and service providers alike. Existing technology means showing where a work location is on a street is quite straightforward. A number of different methods exist, whereby a postcode or more precisely longitude and latitude, and drive mapping engines like Google or Mapquest, to show within a few metres, exactly where a building is located.

Some elements of data are very specific to the application that required them, but longitude and latitude angles are “hundred year data”, in that they are very unlikely to be superseded by “better” location information, and can be utilised by map systems, GPS systems, routing systems, and any other application which works with precise location data.

The FastTrack software uses maps in conjunction with Labour Resource Planning and building data, generally: http://www.fasttrackhelpdesk.com/

Room Booking Software and Cost Reduction

Room Booking software not only provides automation for various types of room, desk and space booking, but can also be aimed squarely at cost reduction. Two of the clear ways are via hot-desking and tackling no-shows. A trusted hot-desking technique is to reduce the number of desks available to non-office-based staff 10% at a time, and carefully review desk utilisation, which should rise as the desk count goes down. An automatic reminder system to make sure staff know they are being scrutinised, followed by publication of a no-show list will reduce no-shows, and boost availability, once again leading to increased utilisation.

There have been instances of management introducing a cross-charge penalty system for no-shows, as well as the “naming and shaming” aassociated with the publication of no-show lists. No-shows not only cost money (as they will increase space required), they also inconvenience staff, who might have to postpone a meeting, only to see empty meeting rooms during their preferred times.

For more details on these sort of techniques, see www.FastTrackRoomBooking.com