Mobile maintenance on 12,000 kilometers

Open Grid Europe (OGE), headquartered in Essen, Germany, is one of the largest transmission system operators in Europe with a pipeline network of around 12,000 kilometers. In the field of network construction and maintenance, more than 500 technicians work for OGE throughout Germany.

Each year, around 60,000 orders are generated in the areas of planned maintenance, fault clearance or network construction. These involve, for example, the inspection, functional testing and maintenance of high-pressure gas pipelines, gas pressure control and measurement systems, and compressor stations.

An on-call service is available around the clock for malfunctions and emergencies, coordinated via the central reporting office for 24/7 malfunction management.

Migration to contemporary, mobile solution

To access information about their orders from SAP PM (Plant Maintenance) while on the road and to create and submit their confirmations to the back office, the technicians used an in-house development based on Visual Basic and Access that communicated with SAP PM via iDocs until 2014.

After the replacement of Windows XP, there was no possibility to further develop this application or to make it compatible with Windows 7.

As early as 2010, OGE began searching for a new solution that would be offline-capable and offer at least the same range of functions as the old mobile solution. The choice finally fell on MobileX-MIP for Field Service from MobileX.

The decisive factors were the support of CATS (Cross-Application Time Sheet) for time confirmations, the application design and the Dynamic Forms enhancement.

In February 2014, the migration to MobileX-MIP for Field Service initially began with a pilot. From June to October 2014, the gradual rollout of MIA (Mobile Maintenance of Installations) - the internal project name - then took place to all technicians.

After four hours of training, the technicians were already able to work with the new solution. Another factor that helped motivate colleagues was the fact that they can use the system from different computers or quickly and easily install a new version if, for example, a device fails without losing any data.

Area by area disposition of orders

OGE's approximately 80 dispatchers are spread across 50 branches throughout western Germany. Orders are assigned to the respective technicians according to region. The reason for this is that in the event of a gas leak, a technician must be on site within 30 minutes.

Every week, technicians receive a list generated from SAP PM in MobileX-MIP for Field Service with planned orders for maintenance and repair.

This means that each technician has a stock of up to 100 jobs on his HP Elite Book, which he can schedule himself to work through. Faults are coordinated from the central reporting center and forwarded to the responsible technician on site.

Thanks to the offline capability of the mobile solution, the technicians always have access to all relevant information on the order, even when there is no radio coverage, or can enter data that is then automatically transferred to SAP PM during the next synchronization.

Technicians also report back their working hours via MobileX-MIP for Field Service. This data is then transferred to SAP CATS, the cross-application time sheet. In the process, they can also make colleague confirmations.

For example, when three technicians carry out a functional test on a high-pressure gas pipeline, one of them enters the times for himself and his two colleagues. To avoid errors when posting in SAP, the data is checked in advance according to predefined rules. In the event of irregularities, the person responsible is informed by e-mail and the data is then corrected in CATS.

Technicians can also use MobileX-MIP for Field Service to document and record the consumption of material from the vehicle warehouse. This includes both larger material already planned in the order and unplanned material that they need on site. The reordering of material takes place automatically in MM if certain minimum quantities are not reached.

Looking Ahead

Since the migration to version 4.2 of MobileX-MIP for Field Service in December 2015, Open Grid Europe has been using an initial electronic form to fill in metering lists.

By 2020, the 400 paper forms currently in place for plant inspections should be consolidated and digitized to a manageable number. This represents a further, important step in the consistent digitization of maintenance processes at Open Grid Europe.