Purpose
Smart Field Services
is aimed at real-time management of mobile teams equipped with GPS/GLONASS navigation tools used in gas distribution, water supply, telecommunication and other municipal and commercial companies which service a network of various geographically dispersed objects or clients.
The system consists of two parts: the server and the mobile applications. The server application provides running, planning and assigning orders received by the dispatcher center to mobile teams as well as control of their execution. The mobile application is aimed at connecting teams with dispatchers. Due to this, dispatchers can coordinate and control performance of mobile teams based on real-time reports.
Smart Field Services allows for introducing orders for maintenance and repair works as well as automatic planning of their execution by distributing load between labor resources in real time taking into account a number of criteria.
The system knows all the information about an order as well as location, current load and plans of mobile teams, so it selects the nearest team which is available at the moment or the one which is going to be free soon, and plans the order for this team. Besides, when planning the system takes into account, whether the team has all the necessary equipment and qualification for execution of this order.
The system also rearranges work plan of teams in an adaptive manner, when more urgent and priority orders appear. Besides, it performs rerouting when traffic jams or road constructions occur as well as other unforeseen events.
Implementation Results
Using Smart Field Services will enable enterprises to achieve the following results:
- operators, technical specialists, dispatchers and managers of a company will be able to get a full vision of all teams’ performance, including display of team’s location on the map as well as work plan of a team for a certain period of time. That is where a team is located at the moment and which task it is doing;
- current progress of task execution for each team;
- the number of unprocessed orders;
- current efficiency of each separate specialist and separate team as well as of the enterprise on the whole and of costs per each operation;
- reduce reaction time to unforeseen events;
- increase interest of teams and efficiency of their performance;
- decrease labor intensity and dispatchers’ mistakes;
- reduce time for training of new dispatchers.
Increasing performance efficiency by 40%
Providing operating availability by 24%
Reducing order reaction time by 12%
Exclusion of mistakes in report making by28%
Application
Smart Field Services enables dispatchers to see location of affiliated objects and mobile teams and their state on the interactive ground map as well as to receive, introduce and assign orders for object service to teams automatically.
Final task executives (team foremen) can register the course of task execution and changes of current situation via the mobile application. Managers of a company can obtain reports about planned and additional works.
Main users:
Dispatcher/operator
- introducing orders;
- planning of teams’ work for orders and their route;
- adaptive planning of teams’ work depending on real-time events;
- display of routes and schedules on the digital geographical map;
- planning resources taking into account various factors and conditions (time minimization, mileage decrease, selection of a well qualified and equipped team, etc.).
Director
- forming reports of teams’ performance;
- control of dispatchers’ and mobile teams’ performance.
Team worker
- Noting the course of order execution and changes of the current situation via the mobile application;
- Achieving relevant order list with the description of a problem and contact person; access to technical data.
Functionality
- Keeping journals of teams and shifts.
- Knowledge base for formalization and accumulation of peculiarities of orders and resources.
Order Book
- Intelligent decision-making support of a dispatcher in resource selection for order execution:
- real-time situation analysis;
- selection of the most suitable team for task execution;
- planning the route of a team taking into account traffic regulations, traffic jams, etc;
- planning teams’ routing and driving time;
- adaptation of schedule in case of unforeseen events;
- minimization of driving time (as soon as possible for urgent orders);
- decrease of total mileage (for low-priority tasks);
- monitoring and control of task execution.
Dispatcher’s order map
- Efficient adaptive planning of works depending on events in real time (with changes of work plans assigned before).
Planning a new order for a team
- Providing individual approach to planning of each order.
- Display of routes and schedules on the map.
Control of team’s time
- Monitoring and control of execution of business processes using inexpensive mobile phones.
- Rescheduling in case of discrepancies between the plan and the actual situation.
- Possibility of adding a photo report via the mobile application.
Adding materials to an order
Control of execution stages
- Integration with the system of order reception (Call Center), accounting systems, wages, etc.
- Daily analytical report on expenses (wages, used materials, operation hours of equipment and tools, fuel, etc.).
Analytics and business-radars
Advantages
- Control of performance of each team (time of order execution, consumption of materials, possibility of videomonitoring, etc.), analytical reports;
- Automatic data transmission between teams in case of sequential operation on one order;
- Automatic formation of documents on preparation for a shift, finishing a shift (including material write-off, etc.);
- Quick and effective planning and coordination of mobile teams’ performance taking into account a number of flexible and changing criteria;
- Online analytics and business-radars;
- Formalization and unification of working processes of mobile teams.
Implementation Experience
The system is currently used in Middle-Volga (Srednevolzhskaya) Gas Distribution Company. Due to its implementation, the following results have been achieved:
- total transparency of teams’ performance for control and assessment of results;
- reduction of reaction time to unforeseen events;
- increase in efficiency of teams’ performance by 40% (12 orders a day instead of 7);
- significant decrease in a number of dispatchers’ mistakes;
- reduction of time for training of new dispatchers.