Uptime Magazine - October/November 2008 - (Page 26)

Shaft Alignment of eMESA. Trevor also sees the possibility of an interesting integration with the external safety inspection system. His vision is that the safety inspection system would automatically create work orders in the eMESA system, which would save the manual creation of those work orders, as they do now. Also on his wish list, a hyperlink from eMESA to Vale Inco’s Business Objects analytics reports. Given everything Trevor’s told me about his success with DTS and eMESA so far, it seems unlikely that any of these will be difficult implementations, nor should they take very long. Summing Up As stated earlier, legacy ERP and EAM systems have not traditionally been known for ease of use. Nor have they generally been known for ease of integration with other applications, like the time keeping system mentioned earlier, or a variety of other software solutions companies have frequently implemented outside their core ERP systems. That may change over time, but for now and the foreseeable future many organizations have data rich, but hard to use and difficult to integrate legacy systems. Fortunately for those organizations, companies like DTS, with applications like eMESA, offer a solution to that dilemma. As mentioned at the beginning of this article KPI’s are an important consideration in every maintenance operation. DTS has equipped eMESA with an easy to design and use analytics and dashboard screen to monitor those KPI’s. The solution can pull data with equal ease from JD Edwards, Maximo, Mincom, Oracle, SAP, and other legacy applications, or even from business intelligence solutions like Business Objects. eMESA provides a friendly user interface that allows users to quickly design custom dashboards and portals, which display KPI’s that are specific to each user’s unique needs. The skills required are similar to those needed to manipulate a spreadsheet, so anyone reasonably familiar with spreadsheets will be able to create their own KPI dashboards for monitoring equipment and maintenance performance. Users can then drill down into each dashboard display to see the underlying details behind every KPI. (Example, figure 2) Finally, we’re all familiar with the saying “less is more”. In preparing this article, I also spoke with Bart Lorang, president of DTS. He offers the “less is more” mantra as well, but with the caveat “simple is hard” tacked on, so the altered maxim becomes: “less is more, and simple is hard”. Based on what I heard from Vale Inco, DTS has succeeded on both counts, they’ve provided a solution that gathers more with less effort, and they’ve made hard stuff simple. Rotalign® ULTRA OPTALIGN® smart The Importance of Scheduling Why is implementing the scheduling module high on Vale Inco’s priority list? Because developing and executing a maintenance plan is difﬁcult. To do so, planners, supervisors, and managers must sort through a wide range of variables, such as: • • • • • what skills or certiﬁcations are required, who’s out sick, who’s accumulated how much overtime, what crews are available, what work has been passed from shift to shift, • what’s the work order backlog, • which safety measures need to be implemented for a given work order, • does work need to be coordinated across departments or plants, • what parts are needed, • are the parts available, • what tools are needed and are they available, • a host of other variables that routinely occur in maintenance and repair environments. h Watc O IDE e V n Onli ALIGNEO® The right tool for every user, job and budget That assembled information needs to be easily and immediately shared with everyone affected: technicians, crews, other managers and supervisors, other shifts, other departments, facilities and plants, etc. But maintenance operations are ﬂuid. Work expected to be ﬁnished today might not get done and will need to be passed to the next shift. Or worse, an unexpected equipment failure will wreak havoc with the plan, requiring a re-analysis and readjustment of the schedule. Planners, managers and supervisors can view and analyze all these variables on one eMESA screen. They can then develop plans and schedules, adjust those plans and schedules as needed, and execute actions, all from that same screen. 305-591-8935 • www.ludeca.com 26 16 october/november 2008 http://www.ludeca.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Uptime Magazine - October/November 2008

Uptime Magazine - October/November 2008 Contents Upfront Upclose: An Asset Management Oasis in the Desert Information Technology: Streamlining Through Simplicity Lubrication: Phases for Framing a Solid Foundation Infrared: Do Your Homework Before You Buy Maintenance Management: Get It Together by Getting Together Motor Testing: Key Elements in Motor Decision Making Precision Maintenance: Shedding Some Light on Tolerances Reliability: RCM & the Mortgage Meltdown Ultrasound: A Multidimensional Tool Vibration: The Whirling Pump Mystery, Solved with ODS Upgrade: Are You Looking in the Right Place for Your Wear Debris?

Uptime Magazine - October/November 2008

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