The Role of Predictive Maintenance

Posted by Chris Mackey

What would a company do if they could predict when things are going to fail within their operations?  Procedures would be put in place to avoid the failure.  If avoidance weren’t possible, procedures would be put in place to minimize the impact of the failure to the end user or customer.  This is a very specific type of maintenance called predictive maintenance.

Chris Mackey, Product Services Manager

Predictive maintenance is a method of maintenance that involves making adjustments to a network in anticipation of specific events that are predicted to occur. These adjustments provide increased network or systems continuity. Predictive maintenance utilizes specific triggers to determine when changes are necessary to improve reliability of operations. There are many different triggers that a service provider can designate to predict what is going to happen in a network. Some specific examples of triggers include:

  • Specific Event – A network may need to be modified and expanded temporarily to handle an influx of traffic during a special event. This event could be a major sporting event, a political event or a conference. All of these events would increase passenger flow through an airport causing a need for additional check in counters, baggage check stations, etc.
  • Seasonal – Airport passenger flow can be affected simply by what season it is. Thanksgiving is a very highly traveled day causing a need to handle more passengers, or the airport could be located near a ski resort, causing an influx of passengers during the winter months.
  • Environmental – Operations at an airport can be affected by a weather related event. A snowstorm will impact an airport differently than an earthquake or a tsunami.
  • Report Driven – There are instances when operations are affected, but it is only apparent because of generated reports. It may be that the network is affected every time new trainees are introduced into the system, or during a particular shift change between two individuals. Thus, evaluating reports can determine the impact issues may have on a network.

Predictive maintenance is an important component to keeping outages from happening. When a service partner utilizes predictive maintenance potential outages are minimized and many times avoided. This is because potential problems are predicted and solutions can be put into place prior to any impact on the network.

It isn’t always possible to avoid outages, next time I will discuss a method of fixing problems prior to the end user being aware that the problem exists.

Posted in Airport Maintenance, IT System Maintenance, Managed IT Services, Professional Services | Leave a comment

Minimizing Service Interruptions with Preventive Maintenance

Posted by Chris Mackey

What’s the number one thing your automobile mechanic will tell you about avoiding breakdowns and maintaining the life of your car? Most likely he or she will advise you to make sure you follow the manufacturer’s routine maintenance recommendations – such as scheduled oil changes, engine checks and tire rotations.

Chris Mackey, Product Services Manager

    How do you avoid service interruptions? What do you do to ensure your customers never experience problems? It is not possible to achieve this, however with preventive maintenance it is possible minimize service interruptions and in turn, customer problems. 

     
    What is preventive maintenance? Preventive maintenance is proactively servicing equipment and performing maintenance prior to equipment breakdown or failure. It is replacing parts of equipment that are wearing down prior to them failing. It is cleaning equipment to ensure moving parts stay mobile. It is updating software to maintain the most reliable system. These changes are done during a business’s non-peak or off hours to avoid impact on customers.

     
    How does preventive maintenance work? A service partner will develop, document and implement a preventive maintenance plan, which specifies what needs to be done to each piece of equipment within the operations. This plan begins with manufacturer’s recommendation for the equipment, but also takes into consideration unique operating aspects. For example equipment that has very high usage or equipment that is exposed to the extreme weather elements will have additional service requirements

    Preventive maintenance extends the life of the equipment, which minimizes costs for new equipment, or expensive repair. Please join us next time to read how predictive maintenance can help avoid interruptions.

Posted in Airport Maintenance, IT System Maintenance, Managed IT Services | Leave a comment

Maintenance Required for Minimum Service Interruption

Posted by Chris Mackey

Any service offering, such as baggage tagging or ticket printing, can be interrupted at any time due to a variety of factors.  The break in service may be caused by something as simple as a paper jam or as complex as a piece of firmware not responding properly to software commands.  Because of the various causes of interruptions, the best way for an airport to manage these interruptions is to work with a service partner that deploys a multifaceted approach to maximizing service availability.

Chris Mackey, Product Services Manager

    This multifaceted approach will first attempt to avoid all service interruptions by properly following equipment standards and guidelines.  The service partner will also monitor the network and determine if there are any external factors that could potentially affect the service availability, these can be anything from weather to the system itself. The service partner will deploy appropriate measures to ensure system availability, and any scheduled equipment maintenance will be done off hours so that it doesn’t impact the airport’s operations. 

    It is not always possible to prevent service interruptions, however, if the end customer doesn’t know there is a problem then it is almost as good as having no problem at all. Monitoring a service both remotely and manually help achieve this. Remote monitoring enables the service partner to identify and address service interruptions as soon as they occur. In addition to remote monitoring, a strategic service partner will have staff on site who can perform visual checks. Once an interruption is identified, either remotely or visually, the service provider will determine the quickest way to resolve the issue. Many times the issue will be resolved prior to it affecting the end customer.

    Finally, there are instances when an outage is unavoidable, and negatively impacts the end user. For example, if a paper jam occurs while a passenger is waiting for a boarding pass to print. This can’t necessarily be anticipated and can’t always be fixed prior to the customer knowing about it.  As a result, the only method for resolving this issue is through incident reporting.  Simply put, the customer lets an airport employee know they are having a problem printing their boarding pass and the airport employee files an incident report.

    To summarize, the multifaceted system resolution approach can be broken down into three main categories, with a total of five distinct methods to avoid or repair interruptions once they occur.  The three categories and five methods are:

    1. Interruption avoidance – A potential outage is avoided by making modifications or adjustments to the equipment or the network.  Two methods of interruption avoidance are preventive and predictive maintenance.
    2. Interruption monitoring – A problem is fixed prior to the end user knowing it is an issue, this is done by monitoring all the services both remotely and/or on site.  Two methods of Interruption monitoring are remote monitoring and proactive maintenance.
    3. Interruption resolution – a problem is fixed once the end user or customer reports the incident.  This is called incident report maintenance

     

    Please join me next week to learn more about preventive maintenance and a discussion on how a service partner can deploy it to help improve your system availability.

Posted in Airport Maintenance, IT System Maintenance, Managed IT Services | Leave a comment

IT Service Options for Airports

Posted by Chris Mackey

Information Technology (IT) is pivotal to meeting the needs of airport customers, both passenger and airline. New platforms and systems are continually being developed to meet these changing requirements.

Chris Mackey, Product Services Manager

    However, often the airport faces the conflicting priorities of evolving their business model with new equipment and technologies while continuing to offer services on their current IT infrastructure. A key component of the migration and implementation of new systems is maintenance and support. As discussed in the AMS whitepaper Airport IT – Finding the Cost and Service Balance, there are several models an airport can deploy to meet IT support needs. These models are:

    1) All functions owned, operated and maintained internally by the airport.
    2) Outsource specific functions, but have the airport maintain overall control.
    3) Engage a Service Provider and migrate to a partnering relationship.

    AMS recommends creating a service partnership to support your IT needs. A service partner will ensure network availability by implementing a multifaceted approach to preventing and solving IT interruptions. Next week, I will discuss the types of interruptions businesses such as airports typically experience and how a service partner like AMS can help better manage and even eliminate some of the interruptions.

Posted in Airport Maintenance, IT System Maintenance | Tagged | Leave a comment

Part 4: When should you use a Service Desk vs. a Help Desk or do you need both?

Posted by Chris Mackey

Have you wondered what a Service Desk is? Are you curious as to how a Help Desk fits into your IT demands? Do you question what the differences are? Would you like to know which one will benefit your company the most?

Join our four part series to gain a better understanding of the Service Desk, the Help Desk and the differences between them:

Chris Mackey, Product Services Manager

  • What is a Service Desk and why is it important to your company? (Posted Nov. 19, 2010)
  • What is a Help Desk and why is it important to your organization? (Posted Jan. 6, 2011)
  • What are the critical differences between a Service Desk and a Help Desk?(Posted Feb. 4, 2011)
  • When should you use a Service Desk vs. a Help Desk or do you need both?(See below)

 

 

Part 4: When should you use a Service Desk vs. a Help Desk or do you need both?

The previous posts explained in detail what a Help Desk is and what a Service Desk is. The posts explain areas where companies may perceive overlap and areas that companies see distinct differences. So, now for the tough question, should you use a Service Desk, a Help Desk or both? To answer this question, let’s review the highlights of each function.

A Help Desk is technically focused

As described in one of the previous posts, the Help Desk fixes problems that are taking place at that instant. Any time one of your employees is experiencing problems utilizing your Information Technology (IT) infrastructure the Help Desk is contacted to fix the problem and get your employee(s) operational as quickly as possible. For this immediate response to end user IT needs, the Help Desk must have employees technically trained in the appropriate technologies. The ultimate goal of the Help Desk is to offer first contact resolution as often and as quickly as possible.

A Service Desk is customer and process focused

As described in a previous post, the Service Desk is offers a Single Point of Contact (SPOC) and is focused on managing processes. The Service Desk is outward focused on the customer and inward focused on the day to day processes of the business. The ultimate goal of the Service Desk is to reduce costs by having the appropriate personnel working on problems, by monitoring trends and by managing processes.

Your business will benefit the most with both a Service Desk and a Help Desk

Why should you use both? The Help Desk and Service Desk serve different purposes and both add value to your company. It is obvious that a Help Desk is required; when something breaks you need to fix it. However, there are many instances when the Help Desk is getting a call and it is not of technical nature. At that time your company is paying premium dollar to a technical resource when one is not required, and that resource could be helping someone with a technical question.

This is where the Service Desk plays a key role in your business solution. The Service Desk will assist end users with issues that are not of technical nature. This allows technically skilled workers to stay available for the technical problems.

When done with ITIL v3 standards, the Service Desk will be the Single Point of Contact (SPOC) and route the call to the appropriate location for resolution. The Service Desk owns the call and will follow it through to ensure the customer who called in the problem is satisfied with the resolution. Having this SPOC and ownership of the call enables:

  • Higher end-user customer satisfaction – The Service Desk is keeping the end-user well informed.
  • Increased end-user productivity – The Service Desk is tracking the problem, enabling the end-user to continue with their daily work.
  • Better cost control – The Service Desk ensures the call is being routed to the appropriate center within the company to be resolved.

The Service Desk also monitors all processes and trends. When the Service Desk notices problems within the processes or worrisome trends, they make adjustments to fix the problem before it is detected by the end-users.

To get the best, most cost effective service out of you IT infrastructure your company should utilize a Service Desk that has hooks into a competent Help Desk.

Posted in Managed IT Services, Service Desk | 1 Comment