SPECIAL REPORT

Mobility can drive asset management

success (if IT lets you)

Sponsored by

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SPECIAL REPORT

CONTENTS

Mobility can drive asset management success (if IT lets you) 3

Mobility add-ons for EAM/CMMS 8

Driving digital energy: Oil and Gas – two industries ripe for digital transformation 10

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Mobility can
drive asset
management
success
(if IT lets you)
Worker productivity features top
mobile EAM/CMMS engagement,
with a surprising number of survey
respondents reporting no access
to mobile devices on the job
By Thomas Wilk,
Plant Services chief editor
In her August 2016 cover story,
Plant Services contributing editor
Sheila Kennedy observes that “it
wasn’t long ago that plant service
work revolved around stationary
workstations. Mobile solution
developments are saving an
extraordinary amount of time in
the plant, the storeroom, and out
in the field, and the benefits
extend to greater safety, perfor-
mance and reliability.” Indeed,
mobile add-on modules are fast
becoming a standard part of
EAM/CMMS software offerings.
PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT
Mobility is an obvious fit for
EAM/CMMS applications
because of the mobile nature of
the repair technician in a plant or
field environment. Technicians
can access maintenance history,
request parts, consume usage
of parts and consumables and
complete work orders, all from a
handheld device. This increases
wrench time by reducing the
amount of time spent at a termi-
nal at the end of shift, increases
maintenance inventory accuracy
and allows real-time access to
emergent work orders and signals
from condition monitoring tools.
Plant Services recently partnered
with enterprise software vendor
IFS to conduct a survey designed
to assess the market demand and
satisfaction for asset management
solutions that can handle distrib-
uted operations and which scale
both with organizational demand
and with new data sets available in
the age of the Industrial Internet
of Things (IIoT). Results from the
survey are being presented in a
series of special reports, with this
report focusing on how and why
organizations integrate mobile
technologies into their asset man-
agement practices.
In general, the results indicate a
connection between the size of
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the organization and a willing-
ness to enable workers to use mo-
bile devices for job-related tasks.
Only a minority of respondents
said they could access EAM/
CMMS software on a mobile
device, however. Among these
respondents, there also seems to
be a focus exclusively on worker
productivity features, and bypass-
ing (for the moment at least) more
advanced condition monitoring
tools that may enable the kind of
proactive insights that enable in-
creased uptime and more effective
asset management. So while the
technology to keep the techni-
cian wirelessly connected to the
central asset management system
is widely available, mobile EAM/
CMMS is still in its infancy in
terms of breadth and depth of
adoption.
BACKGROUND
To get a better understanding of
our survey respondents, we asked
some baseline questions. Looking
at the vertical sectors represented
in the survey, the largest portion of
respondents work in energy (utili-
ties/power-gen, 18.2%; oil & gas,
12.2%) and manufacturing (chem/
pharma, 15.5%; automotive, 11.5%;
food and tobacco, 9.5%; metals
fab, 7.4%), with machine builders
(9.5%) and pulp & paper (7.4%)
also well represented.

Respondents were pretty evenly
split on the size of the mainte-
nance and reliability staff: 2-4
people (25.0%), 5-10 people
(23.0%), 11-50 people (26.4%),
and 51+ (20.3%), with the rest of
respondents (5.4%) outsourcing
this function. Size of M&R staff
was loosely aligned with both total
number of plants managed by the
organization (1 plant, 35.6%; 2-5
plants, 28.2%; 6-15 plants, 14.8%;
15+ plants, 21.5%) and annual
organization revenue (<$50M,
29.7%; $50M-500M, 28.4%;
$500M-$5B, 17.6%; $5B+, 15.5%).
The job function breakdown for
respondents also was quite even
across the range of job titles listed,
with a strong representation by
engineers (40.3%) and managers/
executives (36.3%). The highest
number of respondents identi-
fied as maintenance managers
were highest (21.5%), followed by
corporate executives (11.4%) and
plant engineers (10.7%), and then
followed by reliability engineers
(8.7%), controls engineers (8.1%),
maintenance engineers (7.4%),
and application engineers (5.4%).
Rounding out the rest are mainte-
nance technicians (6.0%), reliability
technicians (4.7%), IT (6.7%), and
sales and marketing (6.0%).
MOBILITY AND ASSET
MANAGEMENT
In this survey, we asked a series of
PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT
FIGURE 1. DOES YOUR ORGANIZATION PERMIT THE USE OF
MOBILE DEVICES FOR MAINTENANCE-RELATED WORK?
14.70%
Yes, we are allowed to use
personal devices that have
been secured by IT
4.20%
Yes, we are allowed to use
personal devices that are
not formally secured by IT
14.70%
No, but we expect to
within two years
questions designed to assess the
ways respondents are using mobile
asset management technologies.
The first question was simple: were
respondents permitted to use mo-
bile devices for job-related tasks?
A clear majority responded yes
(64.2%), with only a slight minority
of these (4.2%) reporting that they
were allowed to use devices that
were not company-provided or at
least formally secured by IT.
These data also raise the ques-
tion of why more than one third
of respondents are not currently
allowed to use mobile devices, and
why more than 21% did not see a
future where they could ever use a
mobile device for job-related tasks!
After analyzing the data from this
question against the various demo-
graphic data collected at the start of
the survey, the strongest determi-
nant of mobile use seemed to be re-
lated to plant size: a heavy majority
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21.10%
No, no plans
45.3%
Yes, we use
company-provided
devices
of respondents who responded “No
plans” to this question also worked
for an organization that managed
five plants or less, and those who
responded “Yes” most often worked
for organizations that managed six
or more plants. Other demographic
data (i.e., industry vertical, job
function, size of MRO staff) did
not seem to determine whether
mobility was more or less adopted
at a given facility.
The next three questions focused
specifically on how organizations
leveraged mobile technologies
with their asset management
systems, and a surprising trend
emerged immediately. When
asked if they were using mobile
devices to access their EAM/
CMMS, :almost 58% of respon-
dents said no. The clear takeaway
is that while mobile devices are
being used in many of these
organizations, EAM/CMMS
 PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT

software is behind the curve and

has not benefitted from this trend FIGURE 2. DO YOU USE A MOBILE DEVICE TO ACCESS YOUR
CMMS/EAM SYSTEM?
towards mobility.
14.71% 57.96%
Yes, both smartphone No
When analyzed against the and iPad

demographic data, a clear major-

ity of respondents who reported
14.71%
“no” work in energy verticals (i.e.,
Yes, an iPad
utility/power generation and oil
& gas), suggesting that workers in
12.61%
those verticals more often lever- Yes, a smartphone

aged mobility for other purposes.

For example, all but four respon- commonly used via mobile de- These responses also dovetail with
dents who reported using mobil- vices, six functions rose to the top, findings from the field service
ity for alerts work in one of the all of which are related to increas- management (FSM) portion of
two energy verticals; also, all but ing worker productivity (with the survey. When respondents
five respondents who reported invoicing and installation both at who had been using FSM soft-
that they use mobility for asset the bottom, at 9.5% each): ware were asked which features
condition monitoring and as- • Work instructions (34.7%) they most commonly use, the top
set inspections work in utility / • Planning and scheduling (32.6%) response at 27.3% was “planning
power generation. • Reporting (30.5%) and scheduling” features; when
• Route management (28.4%) the same question was asked of
When asked about the CMMS • A lerts (28.4%) respondents who had yet to invest
features that respondents most • Repairs (25.3%) in an FSM package, “planning

FIGURE 3. WHAT CMMS FEATURES DO YOU MOST COMMONLY USE VIA MOBILE DEVICES?
(Please check all that apply.)
50
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FIGURE 4. WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING ARE THE TOP MOBILE CMMS BENEFITS?
(Please choose one answer for each of the following.)
1 - Least Important
Labor / productivity
Reduced asset downtime
Work order tracking
Work order management
Improved/real-time
decision-making
and scheduling” at 30.9% also was
their top response.
The final question in this sequence
asked respondents which of five
mobile CMMS benefits they con-
sidered to be the most important.
Overall there was not much differ-
entiation between the five options,
although “reduced asset downtime”
and “improved / real-time decision-
making” stand out slightly as the
top two choices. More importantly,
this question seems to demonstrate
that users are open to deriving a
wide variety of equally impactful
benefits from mobile asset manage-
ment applications.
PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT
2 3 - Moderately Important
11.6% 8.4%
5.3% 8.4%
8.4% 10.5%
6.3% 12.6%
5.3% 8.4%
CONCLUSIONS
Apart from the notable lack of mo-
bile access to EAM/CMMS, the
most surprising result might well
be the nearly 36% of survey respon-
dents who said there were no plans
in place to leverage mobile devices
for job-related tasks, a number
which runs counter to the wide
prevalence of mobile devices that
are brought into plants for personal
use. It may be that the expense of
company-supported mobile devices
may be to onerous for the MRO
budget to bear, given the overlap of
these data with respondents who
work in organizations of 5 plants
or fewer.
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4 5 - Most Important
30.5% 29.5% 20.0%
34.7% 24.2% 27.4%
33.7% 28.4% 18.9%
30.5% 30.5% 20.0%
37.9% 27.4% 21.2%
Also, it is notable that, when it
comes to the most-used mobile
EAM/CMMS applications,
worker productivity is clearly the
top use case. Given the emergence
of EAM/CMMS offerings that
now are able to place asset man-
agement data in wider contexts
(ERPO, MES, CRM) in order to
drive actionable insights via
predictive and prescriptive
analytics, as well as the clear
desire among organizations to
reduce unplanned downtime, this
question is definitely worth revisit-
ing in 12 to 18 months to see if
organizational priorities will have
changed.
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Mobility
add-ons for
EAM/CMMS
New mobile management tools get
data to whoever needs it, wherever
and whenever
Industrial production companies
are seeking modern mobility
solutions to improve how assets,
work, materials, and fleets are
managed. When front-line workers
are equipped with mobile devices
and electronic work-flow software
instead of paper and pens, it greatly
improves efficiency and reduces
costs. Major asset management
vendors are welcoming assistance
from mobility specialists to extend
the value of their enterprise
applications.
MOBILE WORK MANAGEMENT
Mobile work management solu-
tions integrate data from EAM/
CMMS systems and other
sources to streamline the planning,
scheduling, approvals, execu-
tion, and tracking of work. The
Mobile Work Package (MWP)
from eWorkMobility, a division of
NextAxiom Technology, provides
single-click, real-time access to
work functions from the user’s
PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT
current location; this, according to
NextAxiom, improves productivity,
reduces errors, and enhances safety.
MWP and related eWorkMobil-
ity solutions are designed to serve
heavily regulated industries such as
nuclear power.
With MWP, “At a single site, we
saw a $2.7 million return on invest-
ment and a payback period of less
than one year,” says Peggy Davis,
senior vice president of support
services at Savannah River Nuclear
Solutions in Aiken, SC.
Data Glance’s Electronic Work
Package (eWP) offers a data man-
agement framework and Mobi-
lePlus technology to allow users
to edit, validate, update, assign,
authorize, perform, and document
work. Users also can post feedback,
approve work-order closeouts, and
archive documents.
Mobile work processes “relieve
front-line workers and supervisors
from administrative burdens” while
giving them easy access to informa-
tion, says Lee Rogers, DataGlance
VP of strategy and solutions. “It
enables them to focus on getting
the job done right, safely, and in a
timely manner.”
Ventureforth’s latest addition to its
vMobile Suite, vWork Scheduler,
is designed to be a one-stop shop
for maintenance technicians and
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supervisors interacting with Oracle
eAM. Besides offering planning
and scheduling functions, it lets
personnel in the field drill down
to asset and work-order details,
issue and return parts, close work
orders, enter time, and create work
requests.
“Mobile personnel need deep
functionality in a self-supporting
environment whether or not there
is a signal,” says Kevin Kling, a
product director at Ventureforth.
ASSET FAULT MANAGEMENT
Unplanned faults hinder productiv-
ity, but mobility minimizes the im-
pact. EDI partnered with SCHAD
to deliver EXTEND7000 to users
of IBM Maximo EAM in auto-
mated environments. With EX-
TEND7000, engineers receive live,
filtered alarm notifications from
SCADA- or PLC-controlled assets
on their mobile device so they can
respond within seconds and then
return quickly to planned work.
“Users can leverage machine data
to interpret and predict future asset
behavior right from their hand-
helds,” says Jim Lindsay, a vice
president at EDI.
MATERIALS HANDLING
Mobility simplifies materials
handling, as well. Radley Corp.’s
Containerization & Kitting solu-
tion combines automated mobile
data collection with unique data
 PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT

structures to organize and track

pallets, containers, and fixed assets.
The solution uses Radley’s Intel-
liLabel technology to generate
serial numbers or “license plates” of
associated elements.
SUPPORTING VIDEOS:
• NextAxiom Technology:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_GobUv1HL8
• EDI and Schad:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nzp4Jr5Uv-g

FLEETS AND TELEMATICS

Vehicles used in fleets and by field • Radley Corporation:
service organizations require https://youtu.be/YVqEpdC8bWc
special attention. The Cyan mobile
product suite from Blue Dot
Solutions supports vehicle telemat-
ics; driver vehicle inspection REFERENCE WEBSITES:
reports (DVIR); and work, asset, www.nextaxiom.com www.edatai.com
and inventory management to www.dataglance.com www.radley.com
reduce fuel costs and improve www.ventureforth.com www.bluedotsolutions.com
driver safety and productivity.

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Driving digital
energy: Oil
and Gas – two
industries ripe
for digital
transformation
It takes more than gut instinct to
cost justify a major enterprise soft-
ware project to senior management
By Patrick Zirnhelt,
IFS North America
Big data analytics, the Internet
of Things (IoT), 3D printing,
drones, edge computing, wear-
ables, convergence – the list goes
on. These are the drivers of what is
called digital transformation.
Gartner notes these interdepen-
dent trends are “transforming the
way people and businesses relate to
technology.” Nowhere more so
than in the oil and gas industries.
Why? Because they allow compa-
nies to digitize, optimize, and
automate processes that were not
previously connected.
The automation enabled via digital
transformation opens new doors
PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT
for workforce and maintenance
efficiency. Predictive maintenance
becomes a possibility with machine
learning, as well as the automation
of work orders. Integrating Wi-Fi
and location-based technologies
allow for remote monitoring of
potential accidents, tracking and
tracing personnel in dangerous
situations, as well as contractors
and equipment utilization.
Here’s three key technologies
catalyzing digital transformation in
oil & gas.
1. IoT AT WORK – MAKING
SHUT-DOWN DECISIONS
One particular area of benefit is
availability, or the cost of down-
time. This is where most IoT
applications have been targeted
in oil and gas, leveraging sensors
to remotely monitor equipment to
help make decisions about whether
or not to shut it down - a very
expensive decision.
Typically, oil and gas companies
monitor a fleet of similar equip-
ment from a central unit or control
location. When an anomaly is
detected, personnel from the com-
pany and the equipment manufac-
turer assess diagnostics before a
shutdown is ordered. Increasingly,
these data monitoring centers are
run by equipment providers as
part of the support services they
contract to oil and gas customers.
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General Electric, for example,
is doing this for gas turbines,
surveying a potential of 5,000 GE
installations at once.
Asset owners increasingly see the
benefit in gathering data from
their IoT-enabled installations to
improve operations and look for
ways to own both the data they
generate and the technology that
enables them to manage condi-
tion-based maintenance programs.
Expect to see this understanding
become practice as more oil and
gas companies take steps to cap-
ture and learn from smart data to
make their operations smarter and
reduce costs.
The ones that manage to capture
scale effects in this regard are
particularly well positioned, so
expect the largest fleet owners to
be the most aggressive in leading
this development.
2. GOING MOBILE
According to recent research by
Oil & Gas IQ , mobile device
management adoption in the
industry will reach 80% penetra-
tion. This adoption is being driven
by lower cost of entry for mobile
devices and the rise of mobile
friendly enterprise applications.
The next step is to make enterprise
data and functionality available on
the mobile device to deliver ben-
efits in two key areas in oil & gas.

Project visibility. Managing proj-
ects of various sizes and complex-
ity is often the key to success in oil
& gas. However, companies still
struggle with fragmented business
solutions that lack integration,
making the projects more difficult
to manage and follow up. The
situation faced by the engineer-
ing procurement and construction
contractor is even more chal-
lenging because recording work
performed can often not be done
until well after the fact. Mobile
devices offer improved project
management and control by pro-
viding access to and reporting on
critical information in real-time
anywhere, anytime. Efficiency
and quality is increased for on and
offshore maintenance & service
operations by enabling field work-
ers to interact with the software as
they perform work - rather than at
the end of a shift or when they re-
turn to the office. Better decision
making is enabled because there
is less administration and greater
data integrity.
Asset integrity control. Assets
used in the oil & gas industry are
mission-critical not just for their
productive capacity, but because
failures can result in environmen-
tal damage, loss of life and litiga-
tion. Asset Integrity Management
(AIM) is critical for the industry.
This not only means that regular
scheduled maintenance must be
PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT
performed, but the readiness and
serviceability of the asset must
be documented on a very granu-
lar level. Mobility adds value by
enabling work performed to be
captured in the EAM system more
accurately and completely. Auto-
mated routing information is de-
livered to maintenance technicians
to increase percentage of sched-
uled work performed, notifying
them of emergent problems that
need to be addressed immediately.
Diagnostic, maintenance inven-
tory and other data is put straight
in the hands of technicians at the
site of maintenance.
3. CONVERGENCE OF
TECHNOLOGIES –
CONNECTIVITY TO THE EDGE
As operational technologies (OT)
increasingly include mobile devic-
es, software and sensors, OT and
IT can converge in an environ-
ment containing smart machines,
storage systems and facilities.
These technologies are capable of
autonomously exchanging infor-
mation, triggering actions, and
controlling each other indepen-
dently to streamline operations.
While IoT data can be processed
at the data center or at the edge of
the network, the amount of con-
tent that will be generated at the
edge will demand process queries
be delivered to the point of data
entry - rather than bringing it to
the enterprise data center. Indeed,
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edge processing will drive inno-
vation in analytics, systems, and
operational management.
This is particularly key in oil
and gas, where companies can
now take advantage of real-
time data analytics and new IoT
applications that require low,
predictable latency. Consider a
typical offshore oil platform that
generates a tremendous amount
of actionable data daily. Most of
this data is time-sensitive, relat-
ing to platform production and
safety issues. Once data is avail-
able onshore for analysis through
a tool like IFS Data Replication,
the right business analytics will
deliver a total view of the status
of f leet assets in real time.
IN CONCLUSION: DIGITAL
TRANSFORMATION REQUIRES
SOME ‘UNLEARNING’
An Altimeter report with customer
experience guru Brian Solis on
the state of digital transformation
threw up some interesting results.
Of the companies surveyed, 88%
said they were undergoing digital
transformation efforts, but only a
quarter had an understanding of
what it is. According to Forbes,
the challenge creating this gap was
not investment in technology, but
rather the realignment of business
models to reflect the transforma-
tion being sought.

Traditional enterprise IT can
be simply too cumbersome and
inflexible to enable oil & gas to
realign their business models
to quickly realize the business
benefits of digital transformation.
To react to these latest advances,
organizations need the backing
of a new generation of flexible,
agile enterprise solutions. Tra-
ditional enterprise solutions can
take months or years to simply
implement, let alone adapt to
an entirely new technology. The
new breed of modular enterprise
solutions are designed to remove
the time and pain of modifying
existing business processes, and
instead maximize the opportuni-
ties of new technology. Compa-
nies suddenly experience a new
level of flexibility and agility,
PLANT SERVIC ES: SPEC IAL REPORT
and freedom to take advantage of
these new transforming technolo-
gies. The benefits will be huge.
The beneficiaries? Operations,
product offerings and of course,
the customer. Digital transfor-
mation will open up new opera-
tional efficiencies, productivity
gains, and cost benefits for those
companies that successfully make
the transformation. But digital
transformation of the scale that
we are talking that is dynamically
integrated into the enterprise
rather than just bolted on, will
provide businesses with greater
agility to broaden or even change
their business models, support the
introduction of innovative prod-
ucts and services to meet chang-
ing market dynamics.
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Companies will differentiate them-
selves and win business through
better customer experiences and
the greater customer satisfaction fa-
cilitated by digital transformation.
Vice President of Enterprise Service &
Asset Management Patrick Zirnhelt is
a recognized expert on enterprise asset
management (EAM) software. He has
more than 17 years of experience
working with enterprise systems, which
includes software development,
implementation and sales. He is a
professional engineer registered in
Ontario and holds an MBA special-
izing in management information
systems from the York University
Schulich School of Business in Toronto
and a bachelor of science degree in
mechanical engineering from Queens
University, Kingston, Ontario.