The Uptime blog

Manufacturing Business Technology recently announced its MBT 2008 Innovation Insight Awards, and among them was an Honorable Mention for Advanced Technology Services (ATS), a company that provides maintenance and repair services for manufacturing plants.

ATS received the kudos because they deployed Knowledgebase—their own proprietary database of processes, procedures and best practices for their field service technicians. What is interesting is that much of the content in this custom application came from the technicians themselves. Knowledgebase helps ATS to fix equipment faster, thereby reducing their customers’ downtime.

Here at Enigma we agree wholeheartedly with capturing and reusing technical expertise, which is why our products such as InService MRO, InService EPC and the Enigma 3C Platform all include a feature called eNotes. (For a mini product demo of this feature, see our August 15 podcast post.) 

While service manuals may contain some previously established best practices or proprietary techniques, eNotes allow mechanics to insert new comments connected to the original content. This lets companies capture feedback on-the-fly and also gives context to the comments because they are linked to the specific task that was being performed. eNotes are also available to other users (based on authorization/distribution rules). This makes it easy for other mechanics to learn from their peers and for OEMs to update documentation so that it reflects real world experience.

But it’s not just eNotes that make Enigma products useful; our products aggregate and deliver all product content in one place, in ways that streamline the entire maintenance execution process. The ability for service technicians to use a single application to pull relevant OEM information, whether parts information or service manuals, from multiple sources, is a tremendous advantage in the field or the service depot. The description of ATS’ Knowledgebase is impressive, but it sounds like an expensive solution. What is more impressive is that, today, any company can provide similar capabilities using Enigma’s out-of-the-box solutions.

A recent BusinessWeek article (Big Oil’s Talent Hunt, Dec 24, 2007) describes one of the oil industry’s biggest challenges — the workforce is graying. That’s a nice way of saying that a lot of workers are getting old and retiring. This seems like business as usual, older workers retire and younger workers take their place, but right now the number and quality of new workers can’t meet the demand. This situation is great for employees, they get higher salaries and bonuses, but the business takes a hit as the quality, consistency and efficiency of service deteriorates. The problem goes beyond the loss of manpower, the bigger problem is the loss of expertise.

Most labor-intensive businesses face the same challenge as the oil industry. Whether it’s technicians, mechanics or field service engineers, companies that need people to keep assets up and running are finding it harder and harder to attract, educate and retain workers. Experienced technicians are leaving the workforce, and it can be difficult to “ramp up” new technicians; as a result, many companies are extending the retirement age and offering bonuses in an attempt to delay the inevitable. 

But coaxing people out of retirement or into a second career is essentially the same as giving all those gray hairs a dye-job. It works for awhile but no matter how young it looks, sooner or later that hair will fall out. Fixing the problem of the graying workforce requires more than a dye-job. 

It should be obvious that reading page after page of technical information looking for clues to complete a repair isn’t efficient, but that’s the norm. Fortunately, technologies like Enigma 3C understand the context of each situation —the configuration of the machine being fixed, what’s wrong with it and the parts needed to fix it —and provide exactly the information mechanics need to get equipment up and running as soon as possible.  Enigma helps new technicians perform like pros. With this kind of system, even a novice mechanic can display wisdom beyond his/her years—without getting any gray hair.