Brookhaven National Lab raises productivity using IBM solution

Smarter facilities operations: Computerized maintenance management system boosts productivity and saves costs

Instrumented: A PDA is used to indicate all defects that have to be fixed, upload those in Maximo, generate work orders, generate assignments and track them over time

Interconnected: Web browser-based solution connects staff with management and provides visibility into work management system and ability to analyze results

Intelligent: In order to ensure that BNL is more proactive than reactive on repairs, all preventive maintenance is scheduled and performed using Maximo. BNL performs a total of 35,000 work orders per year, and of that 51 percent is preventive. Knowing how many work orders there are per facility, BNL is able to push workers towards the right facilities to keep BNL in the condition it has to be in according to what the Department of Energy determines is mission critical. The information received from Maximo is used to determine what buildings are demolished and replaced.

The inside story: getting there

Top-down and bottom-up support
BNL’s decision to adopt a Maximo solution was a combination of top-down support from the CIO and head of Enterprise Applications, coupled with support from the Facilities Management team and the new end users. Representatives from all parts of the Laboratory participated in the decision making and vetting of these new solutions. The Lab sponsors were careful to show that the recommended new solutions would address both immediate business requirements while providing a foundation for future growth and innovative expansion.

Emphasizing the vision of a Laboratory-wide process engine
When considering its choice of a facilities management solution, the Facilities Management team brought senior management into the decision-making process and got buy-in for IBM Maximo Asset Management by presenting a strong case for system and process consolidation. They focused this case on an extensive review of Maximo’s capabilities to address their Tier 1 requirements. Part of these requirements included integration with the BNL’s existing systems such as PeopleSoft HR.

Senior management put a high value on the cost avoidance of a preintegrated solution, proven mobile solution architecture and consolidated infrastructure. Additionally, senior management found the vision of a Laboratory-wide process engine very attractive, giving them oversight and reporting into all processes related to safety inspections, corrective action tracking, facilities support activities, fleet management and work management in the scientific program areas.

Matter is breaking up at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) but no one has to worry about fixing it. Scientists are smashing gold ions together at the speed of light to see how their components—quarks and gluons—take shape. The machine that does this is the first that humankind has built to reveal what the universe looked like in its first few moments.

Elsewhere at BNL synchrotron radiation is probing the fine structure of matter. Armed with knowledge of how small particles interact, other scientists are fabricating new structures that might one day be used to provide energy. It’s all in a day’s work for one of the Department of Energy’s crown jewels of scientific exploration.

Peter Eterno’s goal is to take care of the 52-acre site in Upton, New York, so that scientists can do their work.

Peter is manager of the Facilities Operations Center, which maintains the BNL’s 348 buildings and their surrounding areas, which include 29 miles of paved roads and 12 miles of sidewalk. BNL has its own fire and police departments.

The BNL’s 2,750 employees and 4,000 guest scientists must be kept warm in the winter and cool in summer. Peter’s job is to make sure that heat and cooled air are flowing as needed as well as water, electricity and telecommunications. Facilities Operations has 700 employees engaged in keeping BNL working properly, including plumbers, electricians, sheet metal workers, steam fitters, carpenters and cabinet makers, water treatment workers and all the other specialists who are needed to keep a small city working.

To help him manage the department, Peter relies on IBM Maximo Asset Management for the workflow that makes service calls efficient and timely, and for the preventive maintenance that helps him get the most value from the life cycle of the BNL’s assets.

Thirty-two percentage point improvement in productivity

BNL moved to Maximo some years ago after having used Datastream MP2 for five years. “Datastream was good for printing out work orders,” says Peter. “But it was a client server application, and you had to come to where it was available. Maximo offers a computerized maintenance management system [CMMS] that is more of a management tool. Being web browser-based, all my managers and their trade people can access the data they need and perform better at their jobs.”

At first the data presented a wake-up call. “I saw that only 50 percent of work orders were being completed,” says Peter. “I started to use Maximo to manage my whole operation, all the workflow and documentation involved in maintaining a physical infrastructure with an asset value of 1.6 billion USD. Maximo has been improved over the years, and the better the tool, the more you can use it to manage your operation. Now in the most recent year we completed 82 percent of work orders. Maximo has helped us improve our productivity by about 32 percentage points.”

All of the work is prioritized. Priority one work needs to be done within 48 hours, for instance, and priorities two and three have longer time frames. Using KPI modules in Maximo, Eterno tracks and trends the response time, costs and the number of work orders in each priority.

“I can go back from year to year through the KPIs and to determine what percentage of work orders in priority one are being completed and what is the average response time,” says Peter.

Fifty-one percent preventive maintenance

In order to ensure that his department is more proactive than reactive on repairs, Peter makes sure that all preventive maintenance is scheduled and performed using Maximo. BNL performs a total of 35,000 work orders per year, and of that 51 percent is preventive. Corrective maintenance accounts for 30 percent and 19 percent is project work.

“You always want preventive maintenance to be higher than corrective because it means that you’re not spending all your time putting out fires,” says Peter. “Also, based on knowing how many work orders I have per facility, I’m able to push my workers towards the right facilities to keep BNL in the condition it has to be in according to what the Department of Energy determines is mission critical. And we use information we get from Maximo to determine what buildings we’ll demolish and replace.”

The Department of Energy requires facilities inspections to determine the condition of buildings. For this, BNA turns to IBM Business Partner VFA based in Boston, Massachusetts. VFA facility is the software tool used and VFA’s service arm helps to actually perform the inspections. The information gathered through VFA inspections integrates with the Maximo tool through VFA AssetFusion.

Saving 240,000 USD in clerical work

BNL uses Maximo to automate reporting to its internal stakeholders so that they have easy email access to information on the maintenance status of their buildings and can track that information by number and priority of service calls.

“Since Maximo interfaces with email servers, I can distribute the reports automatically, eliminating paper reports and getting out the work that otherwise would require four full-time employees at 60,000 USD each, or 240,000 USD annually,” says Peter. “Stakeholders also get much more timely information for making decisions.”

Twenty full-time employees reassigned to higher value tasks

One of BNL’s most recent successes is the implementation of IBM Maximo Mobile Work Manager to eliminate paper work orders and enable workers to input their own information when they are on the job. “Formerly, workers used do the job, then write their comments down on a piece of paper, fill out a time card, and hand the paperwork over to a clerical person,” says Peter. “Data got lost and corrupted. People would forget how many hours they worked and hours were lost. Now the individual does the work and completes the work order on a PDA device. I’m getting better data because the person who did the work enters the data.”

Not only does the mobile system provide more accurate data, it is also helping to improve the department’s productivity because 20 full-time employees, who used to take paper work order forms from the field staff and process them can now work on higher value tasks.

Using Maximo Mobile, Peter’s staff is doing safety inspections. “We can use the PDA to indicate all defects that have to be fixed, upload those in Maximo, generate work orders, generate assignments and track them over time,” he says. “I’m happy because I can see that our money is going into a higher level of productivity and better quality,” says Peter. “Does Maximo help? Without a doubt!”

Business Benefits

• 32 percentage point increase in productivity (82 percent of work orders completed, up from 50 percent)
• 20 full-time employees repurposed to higher value tasks
• 240,000 USD saved in clerical work that has been eliminated by Maximo

Solution Components
Software:

• IBM Maximo® Asset Management
• IBM Maximo Mobile Work Manager

IBM Business Partner

• VFA

For more information

Contact your IBM sales representative or IBM Business Partner, or visit us at: ibm.com
/software/tivoli/products/maximo-asset-mgmt/

For more information on Brookhaven National Laboratory, visit: www.bnl.gov

For more information on VFA, visit www.vfa.com

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