Joanne Mendel

Client objective

Solution

Mobility was seen by business stakeholders as table stakes for competing in the marketplace yet they lacked a customer offering.

A mobile solution would need to leverage the business technology platform capabilities as well as support the needs of customers with assets under management. Platform and Asset Management operated as two separate business units.

A research effort across Platform and Asset Management business units provided an opportunity to connect platform capabilities with additional customer value through the mobile channel.

The following insights, opportunities and concepts, derived from research, are inputs for a stakeholder alignment workshop where they are used to prioritize opportunities against business objectives, inform customer value propositions, and revise product roadmaps with feature releases over time.

• Stakeholder interviews within the Platform and Asset Management (APM) business units revealed that Product Managers had no direct view into the needs of their customers and relied on Sales for these insights. This in turn influence product roadmaps.

• Field research would provide a direct view into customer plant business objectives, work processes, critical decision making and work culture & tools to identify mobile opportunity areas.

• Mobile priorities for the business were identified for the Platform and Asset Management businesses to inform research planning and objectives.
  

Research Scope
Research into 3 stages of power plant work; monitoring and diagnostics, plant operations, and field services would inform mobile strategy, product evolution and emerging technology decisions for the businesses.

Research Objectives
The research focused on understanding five aspects of plant work
in which to explore mobile opportunities.

Field Research methodology

Research Methods ____________________________________________________________

Roles Interviewed ____________________

Control room monitoring & diagnostics
• One-on-one interviews
• Shadow execs for report use
• Observe flow from M&D to Plant

Plant
• One-on-one interviews
• Observe maintenance planning
and dispatch of Engineers to the field

Field
• One-on-one interviews
• Ride-alongs with Field Engineers
• Observe:
• Planned and unplanned events as available
• Asset-side evidence gathering and analysis
• Smart asset and digital instruments

• Manager of Ops and Maintenance
• Control Room Operator
• Outside Operator
• Operations Supervisor
• Engineering Leader
• Working Foreman (2)
• Maintenance
• Electrical
• Performance monitoring center
• Planner/Scheduler
• P&IDs

Research Analysis Plan ______________________________________
The analysis plan informed how the team would collect and organize data in the field for efficient analysis.

Analysis resulted in research deliverables. These were triangulated and further synthesized to reveal non-obvious insights into the current situation and used to generate potential solutions.

Research Deliverables ________________________________

• • Ecosystem diagram: M&D center -> Plant-> Field servicing
  • Workflow and journey maps (current / future state)
  • Personas, persona / collaboration maps
  • Scenarios, situations, Jobs to be Done descriptions
  • Prioritized user needs and features
  • Design concepts
  • Environment descriptions
  • Work place artifacts
  • Systems and tools inventory
  • Photos, videos, audio recordings

PLANT INTEREST IN MOBILITY IS HIGH — if 3 barriers are overcome.

1. Lack of reliability of mobile technology

2. Ability to maintain the mobile solution

3. Ease of use

PLANT FIELD WORK HAS UNIQUE MOBILE CONSIDERATIONS
Workers expect mobile solutions to be aware of their location, provide contextually-appropriate information and services, and withstand exposure to rough elements, tight spaces and changing light conditions.

Daily plant activity examples

• Plant rounds — Outside operator makes rounds, manually entering equipment data, checking asset availability and doing safety checks

• Evidence collection — Operations, Engineering and Maintenance collect samples, take photos, perform tests

POTENTIAL MOBILE SOLUTION — Examples
Workers expect a solution to be contextually appropriate, support easy capture and entry of information, push information to them, and use multiple channels to communicate.

Mobile User Interface Needs

• A user-friendly app on a small device (like an iPhone)

• Minimize physical input — accommodate fat fingers & gloves
  (touch-enabled safety gloves?) , avoid keyboard shortcuts, tabs

• Speech-to-text — only if it works well

• Tap or touch to add a note to anything

• Large text — for older eyes

Research revealed that needs for mobility in plant operations and field work would significantly help the plant in achieving its business objectives.

Plant business objectives were mapped to corresponding operational needs and opportunities for mobility that had been revealed in research.

Day-in-the-life — Performing plant rounds
90% of asset health data comes from the remote monitoring. 10% comes from Field Service Operators performing physical plant rounds. Tying both sets of data together creates a complete picture of the plant for optimizing operations.

Mobile Design Concept — Asset Landing Page
The page serves as a hub to view an asset’s trends, historical information and collects data inputs from the Field Service Operator during rounds.

Features — View trending asset data, pending and closed work orders, timeline of all asset activity, quick access to critical alert calls and manuals.

Research insights, opportunities and concepts are inputs to a stakeholder alignment workshop where they are used to prioritize opportunities against business objectives, inform value propositions, feature prioritization and revisions to product roadmaps.