Mobile maintenance is efficient maintenance
Pen and paper are a thing of the past. The future of maintenance is mobile and brings many advantages. What these are and how they can be utilised with SAP technology is discussed here in the second article of our mini-series on intelligent maintenance.
Smartphones and tablets have become indispensable in our daily lives. Whether checking the weather while having coffee in the morning or reading the latest news on the subway on the way to work, we are mobile. What is already taken for granted in private life is only slowly being adopted in the corporate context, particularly in areas like maintenance. There is still much room for improvement here. The reality is that many processes are still handled with pen and paper.
Efficiency, quality, and even more efficiency However, this is changing. It is increasingly recognised that there is enormous potential in maintenance execution through mobile work directly at the respective facility.
The biggest advantage is certainly that maintenance professionals can be provided with all the information needed to carry out their tasks in a timely manner and on-site. The result: the entire maintenance process becomes more efficient. Especially since the information is not limited to just the order data. Documentation with exploded views of the facilities and information from previous reports or orders can also be displayed directly on the mobile device, without having to carry stacks of paper. Additionally, photos or videos of the respective problem can be taken and directly attached to the report in the system for documentation.
Furthermore, the quality of maintenance increases. As employees can be guided through individual work steps, errors and inaccuracies decrease, and the specified quality standard is maintained.
Another significant advantage is the elimination of 'paperwork'. Since reports are entered directly on the mobile device, there are no more media breaks, and transmission errors are avoided. Additionally, administrative effort is minimised, as data does not need to be transferred from paper to the system later. Time feedback and the technical closure of the respective report can also occur directly on-site, further reducing turnaround time, enhancing work quality, and consequently leading to lower maintenance costs.
SAP-based solutions for mobile maintenance In the SAP environment, a range of tools for different application areas is available for mobile maintenance. Today, we will briefly discuss the following three:
- SAP Standard Fiori Apps
- SAP Field Service Management
- SRB Maintenance Cockpit
SAP Standard Fiori Apps SAP already offers standard Fiori apps for many work steps in the maintenance process within S/4HANA. These web apps are responsive, meaning they can be used on both desktop and mobile devices. SAP provides new Fiori apps for maintenance with each release in the S/4HANA environment.
SAP Field Service Management SAP Field Service Management (FSM) is a cloud-based solution with offline-capable, native mobile applications for Android, iOS, and Windows. At its core is a graphical planning board that displays available resources and the current workload to planning staff in a simple and clear manner. The possibility of AI-based automated assignment of tasks further supports the planning staff and helps simplify and optimise maintenance planning.
In addition to integration into SAP PM standard processes for reports and orders, SAP FSM also features integrated portals for supplier integration and the mapping of self-service processes.
SAP FSM offers extensive customisation options, including business rules, checklists, workflows, and screen configurations, to easily adapt the application or processes to customer needs.
SRB Maintenance Cockpit The SRB Maintenance Cockpit is a partner solution of ours based on SAP Fiori. It is directly integrated into SAP PM via SAP standard technology (OData). The application manages and controls the processes of maintenance execution and report recording.
With the SRB Maintenance Cockpit, both workloads can be managed, checklists and work instructions visualised, and reports and faults can be fed back. Customisable filter and pre-selection functions, based solely on the SAP PM data model, facilitate the use of the application. Furthermore, access to all documents, images, or other file attachments related to the technical objects is possible. The well-known yet tedious rush back to the office to view another wiring diagram is eliminated. Thanks to SAP Fiori, all these processes can be handled directly on-site, digitally, and in real-time on almost any device. Simple, fast, error-free, and without media breaks.
Approaching maintenance correctly – we show you how If you want to know how to bring more efficiency to your maintenance with the solutions presented here, simply contact us without obligation.
What our SRB Maintenance Cockpit can do, we will show you in our Webinar Week on 20 March 2023 at 10:00 AM.
Would you prefer to try it out on-site and discuss it over the Digital Supply Chain? Our Supply Chain 4 Future Summit will take place at the SRB office on 27 April 2023. Registrations will be possible soon.
Or you can stay tuned here in the blog for our little maintenance series. In the next article, we will give you an insight into professional and modern maintenance planning. We will show what is possible and how you can benefit from modern solutions.
The overview of
the many possibilities of intelligent maintenance that we provided in the first article of this series can be found for further reading
.
