It’s a common scenario for the field technician, lost somewhere in the city looking for the location of their next workorder. The technician is often juggling a number of tools, Work Orders, maps, technical manuals, checklists, prestart forms, JSEAs, SWIMS, pens and the list goes on. It can be a frustrating and time consuming! Making Maximo mobile can help the technician become more efficient and effective.

~ Arming the technician with the DataSplice mobile application fully integrated with Maximo ~

The goal of introducing a Mobile solution is to help the Technician get rid of all his paperwork and give him access to the tools he needs, on the go. The result is he will be able to finish Work Orders in timely and efficient manner, without the frustration. The Datasplice application, which is fully integrated with Maximo empowers the technician to do just this through the use of a mobile device.

Now lets follow him on his daily journey with Datasplice.

Use Case Scenario

We will explore a scenario of a gas meter change with the Datasplice mobility solution.

Steps of use case are as follows:

1. WOs for Gas Meter Change are created in Maximo.
2. Planner is assigning WOs to field Technician.
3. Technician downloads WOs to his device.
4. Technician uses device to choose most optimal route for the day and is routed efficiently to the WO location.
5. Technician arrives to the location, access area, completes prestart/JHEA for the WO
6. Technician completes actual meter change
7. Technician completes the work order on mobile device and upload it to Maximo
8. Planner acting on field complete WO.

We are going to follow points 3 to 6 closely in this use case.

~ High Level Business Process ~

Point 3: Technician downloads WOs to his device.

Datasplice synchronization and offline/online mode

Technician can work in online or offline mode. Online mode means that it is always connected to the network and can access Maximo database at any given moment. In the event that the network is not available at the work location, the user can synchronize all relevant data such as work-orders, assets, locations, asset, etc to their device and continue to work the disconnected mode.

In this scenario the technician is working in disconnected mode. Following best practice he synchronizes the data at regular intervals. At the beginning of each shift the technician would have also synchronize the device.

~ Datasplice displaying list of synchronized WOs on the mobile device ~

Point 4: Datasplice & GIS

The technician now wants to see workorders on a map. By choosing map view, the technician will be able to see the street map with overlapped workorders. Workorders can be shown in different colours depending on their status.

~ Datasplice has ability to use ESRI maps ~

By choosing Direction, location will be open in google maps to show optimal path to the workorder.

~ Datasplice can integrate with google maps to view direction to the required WO ~

Point 5: Technician arrives to the location, access area, completes prestart/JHEA for the WO

Datasplice & Forms

Before commencing the work the technician needs to access the area and perform prestart check-ups. Technician will mark all required SWMS, identify potential hazards, type digital signature and identify all additional crew members and visitors on the site and capture their signatures.

~ Datasplice has an option of building wide variety of inspection forms ~

Point 6: Technician completes the work order on mobile device and upload it to Maximo

Datasplice completing work-order and uploading

The technician has now completed work on the meter change. At this stage the data will need to be fed back into Maximo. Fortunately, the technician is no longer required to use pen and paper for this step. He simply needs to populate the relevant data within the workorder and upload it. Once again he needs to enter actual material transaction, perform asset swap, add logs and classifications, attach images complete tasks and so on. Sounds like a lot of data entry but fortunately Datasplice has the  ability to tailor the workorder application according to the user’s needs. So all unnecessary functions will be hidden and Datasplice will display simpler entry sheet to the user.

~ By populating simple data sheet Datasplice will store all values to their respective records, complete WO, and upload it to Maximo ~

Datasplice as an extended arm of Maximo.

Datasplice is a powerful tool that will make Maximo grow bigger and better. It can be used in Work Management, Procurement, or Inventory. It can be used in HSE (as audit and survey tool), or you can create fully custom applications to cater to your business.

It works on every device and every platform and supports Maximo from V6.x onwards.

With Datasplice you can truly use Maximo anywhere.

Datasplice and Maximo are both available on our Maxicloud platform fully managed, fully flexible and fully supported.

BPD’s MaxiCloud platform has all these elements fully integrated to IBM’s Maximo and fully managed on a flexible and scalable platform. Our approach is to bring the best of breed products together to extend our client’s Enterprise Asset Management capability. Learn more about BPD’s Global Cloud solutions.