AltaLink: Improving Service Delivery Through Improved Maintenance Scheduling

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1 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. AltaLink: Improving Service Delivery Through Improved Maintenance Scheduling

2 AltaLink Management Ltd. Industry Utilities transmission and distribution utilities Products and Services Electricity transmission Web Site SAP s SAP Multiresource Scheduling application AltaLink Management Ltd. maintains a network of more than 280 electrical substations, which help deliver electricity to more than 85% of the citizens of Alberta, Canada. Maintaining these substations requires the precise scheduling and coordination of personnel and equipment, for some substations are more than a day s drive from the nearest AltaLink service depot. To maximize scheduling efficiency and minimize substation downtime, AltaLink deployed the SAP Multiresource Scheduling application. 2 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

3 AltaLink: bringing power to the people AltaLink is the largest regulated electricity transmission company in Alberta, Canada. More than 12,000 kilometers of high-voltage transmission lines move electricity generated by thermal, wind, and hydroelectric plants throughout the province to a network of more than 280 transmission and distribution substations. These substations step down the power in the high-voltage lines for safe distribution over lowervoltage lines to homes, farms, and businesses. More than 85% of the residents in Alberta are served by the AltaLink transmission network. AltaLink has been providing transmission and distribution services to Alberta since Today, AltaLink employs more than 800 people, including approximately 80 technicians who maintain the transmission substations throughout the service area. >85% Of Albertans are served by the AltaLink infrastructure 3 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

4 A world-class electric transmission company AltaLink is building a world-class electricitytransmission company distinguished by exceptional safety, reliability, cost-effectiveness, customer service, and a commitment to the environment. Its competitive advantage lies in its use of technology, its focus on innovation, and a unique corporate culture that focuses on delivering value to customers, shareholders, and stakeholders. Yet the challenges for AltaLink are significant: portions of the transmission system are decades old and need to be updated. Moreover, the system is spread across a huge geographic area. Even though AltaLink has service technicians located in Edmonton, Calgary, Red Deer, and Lethbridge, Alberta, getting a maintenance team to some substations involves a full day s drive. AltaLink schedulers had been managing the company s substation maintenance efforts using individual Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. managers, though, understood that AltaLink could operate more efficiently if planners relied on a single, shared scheduling software system. In particular, they wanted a single system that could leverage information existing in other data repositories, such as the technicians vacation schedules that reside in the SAP ERP Human Capital Management (SAP ERP HCM) solution and the plant-maintenance work orders that are present in the SAP Enterprise Asset Management (SAP EAM) solution. With real-time insight into resource availability, work requirements, and the entire maintenance picture, AltaLink would be able to streamline scheduling, avoid the need to reschedule events, and increase overall substation uptime. 4 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

5 Building on a foundation that works When AltaLink began to search for a scheduling solution, it was already using SAP ERP HCM to support its human resource management needs and SAP EAM to manage the substation assets themselves. A team was assigned to review numerous scheduling products and recommend a solution. After extensive review, the team found that only one provided the combination of shared scheduling functionality and integration with the existing SAP landscape that AltaLink managers sought: SAP Multiresource Scheduling. Because of its integration with the human resource, plant maintenance, and project management software that we had already licensed from SAP, the SAP Multiresource Scheduling application was the right choice, says David Mofford, senior SAP team lead for AltaLink. With SAP Multiresource Scheduling as part of an integrated SAP solution, AltaLink schedulers have up-to-the-minute insight into the availability of all the technicians in the company. They can see who is available and who is on vacation. Schedulers can even see if a technician is currently assigned to a task at one substation facility and could, hence, perform another task while there. This last insight eliminates the need to send out an additional truck and eliminates a second planned outage for the substation, thus reducing cost and improving service uptime. 5 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

6 A single, shared, integrated scheduling solution Within AltaLink, a team of asset analysts uses SAP EAM to determine what work has to be done to the transmission and distribution infrastructure. They publish a set of work orders an average of 3,500 each year that three AltaLink schedulers review in detail and then use as the basis for planning and scheduling the actual work. They look over each work order, says Mofford, to determine what needs to be scheduled and what resources will be required. Do I need to schedule an outage for this job? Do I need a crane or scaffolding? The scheduler uses SAP Multiresource Scheduling to build an entire work package for each order, and, at the same time, is looking into the system to see what other work orders might involve the same substation. If we can bundle them all together, we can cut costs and save time. Scheduling the jobs in SAP Multiresource Scheduling is as easy as dragging and dropping the work orders, Mofford goes on to say. The scheduler can assign a work order by dragging it over and dropping it onto the name of an available resource. Similarly, the work order can be dragged onto a graphical calendar and dropped onto a specific date or dragged over and dropped onto another date if the work order must be rescheduled. Schedulers can also change all the orders taking place on one date or in one location, and they can even reschedule tasks assigned to a particular resource. If one technician falls ill, for example, all the tasks assigned to that technician on that day can be swiftly reassigned. And what s the perspective of the technicians performing the work? They can see an up-to-date schedule at any time by consulting SAP Multiresource Scheduling. 6 / SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved.

7 Less chaos, lower costs, and higher service uptime Immediately after deploying SAP Multiresource Scheduling, AltaLink realized many tangible benefits. The cost of scheduling and rescheduling thousands of work orders dropped by more than 30% because the job that previously required seven schedulers is now completed with just three schedulers, thanks to the software. Using a single, shared, scheduling-software system has all but eliminated the duplicate-resource bookings that had frequently occurred when the schedulers used unsynchronized spreadsheets. SAP Multiresource Scheduling prevents different schedulers from selecting the same technician to be in different places at the same time. Once one scheduler has paired a technician with a task, no one else can schedule that technician for another task in another location at the same time. This kind of scheduling clarity has significantly reduced the amount of time that planners spend rescheduling projects at AltaLink. To be sure, AltaLink planners do still reschedule projects because someone gets sick or because of unanticipated weather but today the process is more efficient than ever: drag, drop, done. Finally, because the schedulers at AltaLink now share a view of all the work that has to be done as well as a view of all the resources available to perform that work the impact of planned maintenance on the distribution network has proven to be less severe than it once was. Planners have grown adept at bundling work orders associated with a single site which often requires less substation downtime than would the unbundled execution of each work order on different days. The net effect is an increased amount of uptime in the transmission network, an outcome that pleases everyone. CMP26026 (13/09) 2013 SAP AG or an SAP affiliate company. All rights reserved. 7 / 7

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