The chase: why missing inventory undermines proactive asset management

Utilities know they need to move to proactive asset management and maintenance regimes, shunning reactive legacy approaches. This is essential to achieving stretching efficiency and customer satisfaction outcomes, not to mention keeping on top of the ever-present safety concerns that come with running extensive critical national infrastructure.

As Richard Sansom, director of East Midlands Network at Cadent recently told Utility Week, ahead of his participation in an asset management webinar which explored the lessons utilities might be able to glean from big retailers: “A reactive network is an expensive network to the customer…We need to be obsessed with delivering an effective and efficient service for the customer.” Too often, he added, “infrastructure businesses” forget who their assets exist to serve.

But moving to a truly proactive approach is easier said than done. Firstly, there is the challenge of gathering accurate asset health information. This depends on knowing where your infrastructure assets are in the first place – not always a given across extensive stretches of often vintage network. And once assets are all located and mapped, there’s the issue of objectively assessing their condition and associated risks.

Many utilities, including Cadent, are deploying a range of technologies to help tackle the above issues. During his recent webinar appearance, Sansom highlighted Cadent’s use of smart vehicles which patrol the network at night gathering detailed images and emissions data to help the gas company understand exactly where it needs to prioritise interventions to keep services running safely and reliably as well reducing its carbon impact in a targeted way.

It’s not just visibility of the big assets that’s important, however. During our recent webinar, speakers discussed how a holistic and proactive asset management regime needs to marry up smart infrastructure with a smarter approach to tracking and tracing its inventory of field force assets.

Sansom drove this point home, stressing that the operational drag created by operatives arriving at a job only to find an essential tool or piece of equipment isn’t on the van is not to be underestimated. Furthermore, he suggested the frustration caused by repeat experiences of aborted jobs due to lost or missing items can cause a significant drain on morale and motivation, driving further productivity and efficiency losses over time.

This context made an ideal setting for the wider webinar agenda. The event, hosted in association with The Barcode Warehouse, explored the important role of track and trace technologies like barcodes, QR codes, RFID and computer vision in supporting proactive asset management and exceptional customer outcomes by ensuring granular visibility of utilities’ inventory.

Drawing on lessons from large retailers who – driven by fierce cost competition, the rise of omni-channel operations and growing anxiety around cyber security – have already invested significantly in technologies to track individual stock items, pallets, mobile devices and more, the webinar also showed:

• Why real time visibility of items matters: As Zebra Technology’s Mark Thompson pointed out, it’s of limited use to a company to know that it lost a field mobile device a week ago. By that time, valuable information stored on the device may have been compromised leading to bigger cyber security and physical safety risks. Real time insight coupled with the ability to remotely lock down access to a lost device are musts.
• How AI will impact field force and assets: AI is already helping operatives across many sectors with remote coaching and problem-solving support to promote greater confidence and right-first-time fixes. These capabilities could soon be augmented by the rise of “ambient intelligence”. This entails AI-driven eco-systems of context-aware assets and devices.
• Why standardisation is needed: Led by a presentation from GS1 UK’s Shervin Yousefzadeh, webinar speakers unanimously agreed that maximum benefits in asset visibility and proactive management require adoption of a common language for identification and tracking across supply chains. With standards already implemented in other sectors including retail, healthcare and construction, utilities have a great opportunity to accelerate improvements in productivity, efficiency, safety and more by adopting rather than inventing.

Summing up the core message of the webinar, Matt Poxon, enterprise account manager at The Barcode Warehouse said: “Whether it’s meters in the field, rugged handheld devices used by field engineers, or other critical operational assets, having an accurate view of where equipment is, how it’s being used and when it needs attention is becoming increasingly important. By improving visibility across assets and operations, organisations can keep colleagues better connected, support faster decision-making and ultimately deliver more efficient services.”

For more insights into strategies for improved asset visibility and proactive asset management, listen to Utility Week’s recent webinar on demand.