Asset to Demand Tracking
Customer issue:
Our customer had a large and complex inventory of hardware systems, spare parts, and other assets located at facilities around the world. They also had a years-long future roster of events, such as test events, training events, deployments, and maintenance windows, each of which required a different combination of systems, spare parts, and assets.
The customer used a combination of spreadsheets and PowerPoint slides to keep track of all of these competing demands, with the end result that it was easy to make mistakes (e.g. assigning the same asset to two different events at the same time), it was difficult to track changes to the plan, and it was difficult for stakeholders to get a quick status on where potential trouble points were.
Pioneering Evolution Solution:
We created an application that provides our customers with a “four dimensional” look at the intersection between assets and events, allowing them to quickly recognize conflicts or trouble points.
Asset managers have the ability to define and describe all available assets, indicate “down time” like planned maintenance, and optionally to define the interaction rules between different assets (for example, this particular widget can only be used with these 3 other widgets). They can see the current whereabouts and all future demand signals for each of their assets.
Event managers can define and describe the event, its mission requirements, and reserve particular assets for their event. The application takes into account shipping time to move an asset from one part of the world to another, maintenance windows, and other user-defined rules to ensure that the asset availability picture is always accurate and complete.
Intuitive and customizable dashboards allow stakeholders at all levels, from asset and event managers to senior executives, to quickly pinpoint issues. Easy-to-configure user permissions and roles ensure that people only see and edit the data appropriate to their role.