When it comes to the maintenance technicians at your manufacturing company, you’ve really gotta hand it to ’em…literally. If you'd like to see big producvivity gains from your maintenance techs, try handing them each a mobile, handheld computing device to help them better do their jobs. “Mobility,” after all, is one of the fastest growing trends in asset maintenance these days. And for good reason. Improvements in maintenance tech productivity are often reported at 20 percent or better when handheld computers are used, due to reduced paperwork requirements alone. Other mobility benefits include better data accuracy and improved

If technicians can connect to enterprise applications via wireless handheld computing devices, for example, they can download information in the field that is needed for diagnosis and repairs, such as failure codes, schematics, parts inventories or the recent repair history on a piece of equipment. What’s more, if they notice equipment problems or anomalies during their rounds, they can upload pertinent data or enter a work order immediately using their handhelds, instead of writing it down and waiting for someone to enter it into the system.

Quick paybacks

Several industrial end-users interviewed by Automation World are quick to confirm these and other advantages of mobility technology.

BP p.l.c., the London-based energy company, for example, is projecting savings of about $1 million per year from equipping operators at BP’s Carson, Calif., refinery with mobile handhelds for use on their daily equipment rounds. The savings will come through improved people productivity and better availability of assets, notes Dave Lafferty, technology consultant for the company’s Chief Technology Office, in Warrenville, Ill. Given those kinds of savings, BP currently plans to deploy the technology at two additional U.S. refineries soon, and will probably also use it at other refining and non-refining operations worldwide, Lafferty says.

Likewise, at KeySpan Corp., New York state’s largest electric generator, John Ragone, automation manager, office of electric generation, believes that a new mobility solution his company is piloting for use by its maintenance personnel and others has the potential to produce major savings. Using phone/Pocket PCs (personal computers) communicating through a commercial cellular network, KeySpan technicians are able to access key performance indicators (KPIs) in real-time, whether the techs are up on a stack monitoring emissions, or down at a tank farm taking readings.

The application relies on software from Transpara Corp., of Pleasanton, Calif., known as Visual KPI, which draws on data housed in KeySpan’s PI historian, supplied by OSIsoft Inc., San Leandro, Calif. The PI database interfaces to all KeySpan systems across six plants, storing real-time data on temperatures, fluid pressures, equipment vibrations and the like.

“You name it, and we have communications with it via our PI database,” says Ragone. “So now, by putting this Transpara Visual KPI product on top of it, we’re able to actually pull out specific data for what we’re working on.” Engineers, managers and technicians will use their Pocket PCs to access preconfigured KPI screens for a real-time look at what’s happening without going to the control room or the office. For quick access, the KPI screens can be stored as Web browser favorites on the handheld devices, and users can drill down into the data as required.

The ability to distribute real-time metrics data on demand, when and where needed, will pay off quickly in helping KeySpan technicians and managers to head off operating problems and breakdowns, Ragone says. “When you consider that the loss of a generator can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars a day in replacement costs for power, then it doesn’t take a lot to get a return on investment on something like this,” he observes.

Similarly, Lynn Modisette, a Houstonbased senior systems administrator for Air Liquide America, a producer of industrial gasses, says that equipping the company’s field technicians with wireless handhelds is a no-brainer. Air Liquide’s nationwide maintenance field staff has been using handheld devices driven by modems and docking stations since 2002, and the company is now converting to wireless Pocket PCs. “The pricing on these ...