IBM Asset Management Blog

Connectivity Means Everything for Everyplace!

2011-08-29T12:30:00-04:00

Today's blog entry comes from Dave Calvert.

“Do I really need a constant connection for Maximo Everyplace”? This is a fairly common question that I get from customers inquiring about the requirements of Maximo Everyplace. The answer is definitely “Yes”. However sometimes people get carried away in thinking that Everyplace isn't for them because they have some dead spots in their building. Nothing could be farther from the truth!

For those reading about Maximo Everyplace for the first time, Maximo Everyplace is a versatile add-on to Maximo that, quite simply, allows Maximo to be deployed on an iPhone , iPad, iTouch, or Android device. It leverages Maximo’s Application Designer to create mobile applications that can easily be tailored to meet the specific requirements of the mobile user in virtually any role. (For more information click here).

The design of the Maximo Everyplace product utilizes the device browsers to access Maximo. As such, the Everyplace product, just like a Maximo user's desktop, only works as long as it maintains its connection. So the benefits of being able to tailor the mobile user's UI are indeed huge, but will only fully deliver on potential value if deployed in an environment providing the user a reliable connection.

If you do have dead spots in your buildings though, before you get discouraged, think through how a mobile user would actually use Maximo on the mobile device. Typically, if you're using a web application -- even just to change status, take ownership of a work order, or enter some labor hours or some notes -- you're not going to be running all over the building while carrying out the entry. Rather, you'll stay within a given area for the time it takes to log in, make your edits and log out. You'll need reliable connectivity in the area that you choose to do the entry. Everyplace is a great option for people who need that kind of limited access to Maximo functionality, and have access to connected hot spots where they can get their work done.

While connectivity is everything to Everyplace, it is easily deployed and providing tremendous value to users working within environments providing predictable and reliable, yet spotty signal coverage.

CFI President discusses IWMS and participates at upcoming TRIRIGA UG Conference

2011-08-22T12:30:00-04:00

Besides business & boats, Bob Verdun, President of Computerized Facility Integration, LLC, longs to meet Richard Branson as part of his bucket list. Does this provide an insight into Bob’s personality? Read about my interview with Bob to see what you think.

One look at the CFI website and you get the sense of adventure……..race cars! You will also see that CFI has 21 years of experience with real estate and facilities management solutions including integrated workplace management systems (IWMS). And the reason I’m talking to Bob today is because he is one of many in the industry who was excited about the TRIRIGA acquisition and the combined value of TRIRIGA with IBM, having been involved with both solutions.

With approximately 1.5B square feet of TRIRIGA implementations at various household name clients, CFI looks forward to the future possibilities of a combined IBM Maximo Asset Management and TRIRIGA solution, especially targeting smarter building requirements. The integration of IWMS, for the width and consolidation of tools, with enterprise asset management (EAM), for the depth, will enable companies to more effectively support their global enterprises. Add to this IBM’s vast support infrastructure and integration capabilities with business intelligence tools and dashboards from IBM Cognos and the automation possibilities for smarter buildings expand vastly. We should totally be able to program the system so that my IBM office will always maintain a comfortable temperature and not be impacted by air conditioner outages ever again!

Bob explains that the combination of IWMS & EAM will enable production lines and mission critical data centers to optimize up-time and facility efficiencies. As the IBM solution ties the comprehensive maintenance work order infrastructure for building operations, along with the industry modules from Maximo; to the real estate and space management capabilities from TRIRIGA, clients will have a more robust solution from a single vendor. Adventuresome as NASA contracts with Richard Branson’s Virgin Galatic? Not at all because effective real estate solutions usually combine IWMS with EAM solutions, but it’s a rare find to have both coming from the same company.

In addition, the IBM solution enables clients to focus on sustainability by putting in place tools that will not just monitor and measure, but also automatically take action. And when you’re focused on energy, green and LEED management initiatives to become more efficient and sustainable, automation is a basic requirement.

CFI will be a presenter at this year’s TRIRIGA International User Conference, October 18-20, 2011 where you won’t want to miss their presentations on:

Ten Results-Based Strategies for Reducing Real Estate and Facilities Costs – summary of $100M in savings from a group of Fortune 500 companies
GlaxoSmithKline Solves the Lease Management Process with TRIRIGA
From Concept to Execution: How to Make IWMS a Reality – Dow Chemical case study

Prior to that CFI will participate at the Facilities Management Maximo User Group conference October 16-18, 2011.

And of course if you miss either of these, you can always look for them at the IBM Pulse 2012 conference, March 4-7, 2012 where they will likely be participating. Stay connected to Pulse 2012 here.

Facilities Friday: EAM & IWMS role in smarter buildings

2011-08-19T12:43:00-04:00

Hi blog enthusiasts, welcome to another installment of Facilities Friday. When we last met, we talked about our new solution, IBM Intelligent Building Management. Quick refresher: IBM Intelligent Building Management is a solution that combines real-time monitoring with event management and analytics to help building owners and managers optimize energy, enhance operations, improve reliability & extend asset life to help create a smarter building. It integrates with building management systems & equipment to capture data which can be used for improved energy analytics and performance, facilities management and reduced operating costs. Great segue to what I would like to talk about today.

A key part of building management, in addition to monitoring and analytics (in my opinion), is asset and workplace management. Buildings, equipment and technology assets have always required close management from operations and maintenance staff and although management tasks may be less hands-on and more computer-based, asset management still must be closely focused, monitored and regularly adjusted. And IBM's Maximo has has always been there for the ride. Add to that our new solutions for integrated workplace management (TRIRIGA) and you have a winning combination.

When we talk about smarter buildings, we always talk about three areas: energy, operations and space. In the energy domain, building and facilities managers need to understand how energy is used, how much it costs, where their facilities consume excess energy, how the building has performed over time and which opportunities exist to reduce energy waste and increase resource efficiency. On the operations side, they need to know the type of equipment in the facility, the age of that equipment and the cost of its maintenance, downtime of the equipment, the services associated with how it is maintained so that they can provide reliable service, and identify the most effective operational and capital improvements. And lastly, on the space side, they need to understand the usage of the buildings, the occupancy level the facility, the occupancy cost, and the degree to which the building space is serving the type of business conducted in the building, whether it is a hotel, a data center, or a commercial company. Enterprise asset and integrated workplace management play in to all three of these areas and can help create smarter, sustainable building operations. Smarter buildings are:

Instrumented, with sensors, meters and instruments that monitor assets, energy use, equipment status, systems performance, and environmental conditions to supply data to the management solution.
Interconnected, providing integrated data gathering and assembly capabilities that deliver a top-down and bottom-up view of facility performance, including energy and space use and costs.
Intelligent, with capabilities for advanced analytics that can detect and diagnose faults, deliver insight into how to save money, and help predict problems before building performance and occupants are affected.

In sum, asset and integrated workplace management can help create smarter buildings through reducing costs; lowering energy and natural resource consumption; increasing efficient use of space; extending equipment’s useful life; managing inventory, purchasing or lease contracts; and delivering business services that provide a competitive advantage

Much of what I've talked about today (and then some!) is available in a white paper that I helped create, if you would like to read more, I urge you to download it: Creating sustainable business operations with IBM asset and integrated workplace management solutions.

And last but not least, I'd like to make you aware of an upcoming webcast. We have some great speakers lined up from IBM, TRIRIGA and Tulane University for a webcast that will take place on September 21 at 1PM eastern time entitled "Smarter buildings: Integrate facilities management and IT to reduce energy and operating costs". More details to come!

It's July and the Esri Faithful Return San Diego in Record Numbers

2011-08-12T20:43:58-04:00

Last month I, too, boarded the JetBlue flight from Boston to San Diego to attend my 8^th Esri International User Conference with over 15,000 other attendees from the GIS community representing organizations from 126 countries. As I have often said before, the Esri User Conference (or just “UC” as the insiders call it) continues to be an inspirational event and a totally unique technology conference experience.

My week at the “UC” started on Saturday with the Esri Team Water/Wastewater meeting in the San Diego Convention Center where one of the most interesting presentations was by South Australia Water’s Jim Carlson-Jones on SA Water’s GIS Journey which includes Maximo and Esri, of course. SA Water has nearly 30,000 km of water mains and pipelines – that’s three quarters of the way around the world, folks. Sunday was spent at the well know San Diego Zoo and the animals were all very cooperative for photos including the pandas who were happily eating bamboo shoots.

On Monday, Esri President and CEO Jack Dangermond began the packed plenary session with an explanation of the theme of this year’s conference: “GIS-understanding our world” suggesting how GIS can help the world with challenges such as climate change, urbanization and land use, loss of biodiversity and other issues. In Jack’s view GIS is the right platform to bring together all types of information such as real time data, demographics and new sources like crowdsourcing to help organizations, countries and companies solve big problems.

IBM had a strong presence at the UC this year, including an exhibit in the Pavilion featuring six different offerings plus a kiosk about IBM Watson, the first non-human quiz show contestant on Jeopardy.

· IBM Maximo® Spatial Asset Management – conference attendees were able to see the newest 7.5 version of Maximo Spatial, which uses new Esri technology to provide a flexible, proven JavaScript™/REST-style architecture, which enhances performance and usability, while enabling the use of Maximo security and configuration options

· IBM Smarter Water Asset Management – this demonstration featured the work done by the IBM R&D labs in conjunction with DC Water to create analytics-driven asset management with Esri built using Maximo, SPSS, Cognos, and iLOG. The solution provides spatial schedule optimization for work management, predictive failure analytics for maintenance optimization and asset usage analysis for revenue optimization. IBM Maximo Spatial drives efficient operations while Esri’s ArcGIS Server drives location based metrics and the IBM advanced analytics turns water data into actionable insights

· IBM Smarter Utilities – IBM has teamed with Telvent around the smart grid, this demonstration showed Telvent’s Designer integrated with IBM Maximo which streamlines the entire graphic work design process with a quick and efficient system updates through integration instead for multiple manual, paper-fed workflows

· IBM Cloud Computing – this exhibit opened the discussion about the latest in cloud computing at IBM, including capabilities and benefits of cloud computing applicable to enterprise geospatial applications and data.

· IBM Intelligent Operations Center – this demonstration featured a new Software Group Industry Solutions offering to help cities coordinate their efforts to deliver exceptional service to their citizens. Leveraging information across all city agencies and departments allows organizations to make smarter decisions and coordinate cross-agency resources to respond to issues rapidly and effectively

· Public safety and predictive analytics - IBM Business Analytics partnered with Esri and SpotOn to provide deeper insights, better decision-making and ultimately improved public safety outcomes through predictive analytics, business intelligence, reporting and dashboards integrated into our combined Crime Prevention and Prediction solution

On Thursday morning, IBM’s Xuan Liu teamed up with Louis Desjardins from DC Water to speak about “Leveraging GIS for Effective Asset Management.” This was a popular topic with about 150 attending the session where they showed how GIS makes difference in DC Water's asset management and what benefits they have achieved.

IBM sponsored a special presentation on the IBM Cloud Portfolio and Strategy, as well, a number of Special Interest Groups (SIG) including GIS in Logistics, Enterprise Architectures, Aviation, Ports and Railroads. But the most interesting SIG was the “Water/Wastewater Pool Party” ( everyone loves this name ) it was held at the Hilton Bayfront’s pool and featured a great band made up of all Ersi employees.

Esri likes conference attendees to have fun, so on Thursday evening everyone was taken by bus (all 15,000) to San Diego's iconic Balboa Park for an exclusive celebration where attendees could tour a variety of world-class museums and enjoy live music, performances, and cuisine from around the globe.

It is a tradition at the UC for all the IBMers to wear matching Hawaiian shirts – fitting in the warm San Diego climate and making us easy to spot. They also became very popular with attendees who wanted to buy them, of course, we didn’t have any to sell, at least not any that weren’t already worn. When we did find a couple to “raffle off”, we set it out on display and within seconds someone took the shirt as if it was a cheap give-away. We could only smile and say “we don’t have any more” when the same person came back asking for a second shirt.

To see what Jack Dangermond and Steve Mills, head of IBM Software Group have to say about "Making Cities Smarter with Esri and IBM" visit this link.

TRIRIGA brings new IWMS capabilities to IBM

2011-08-08T08:30:07-04:00

Here we are mid-summer and things have been busy ever since the exciting news back in April of IBM’s acquisition of TRIRIGA. I’ve been spending lots of time getting to know TRIRIGA’s capabilities and customers and welcoming them to the IBM family. More information can be found on the TRIRIGA acquisition welcome page (http://www-01.ibm.com/software/tivoli/welcome/tririga).

The more I talk to people about the value of bringing additional IWMS (integrated workplace management systems) capabilities into the EAM portfolio with Maximo, the more it makes sense. Being able to offer customers capabilities to manage all of their asset classes has been a long time philosophy with Maximo and facilities have always been one of those assets. The additional functionality that TRIRIGA offers around Real Estate Portfolio Management, Space Management, Project Management and Energy and Environmental Management brings great opportunities to customers managing not only their facilities but all of their assets. These functions also add great value to the work going on to deliver Smarter Planet and Smarter Building solutions by IBM.

There are many organizations out there today using both Maximo and TRIRIGA to cover various functions, and I’ve had some great conversations with them on our vision and how these sets of products greatly compliment each other. They are more than enthusiastic about helping drive the product direction and sharing their experiences and requirements with us.

The intent over the next several years is to offer the capabilities of both solution sets on a single platform, with a single data repository, single UI and single business process engine. The benefits of having visibility to information in each of the disciplines involved in managing the various aspects of a facility will allow managers and executives to make more informed decisions. Take for example a real estate decision. It would useful to the property manager to understand the current condition of a building, any planned capital project investments, the usage and occupancy rate of the building, what critical assets are due for replacement and other maintenance and operations related data when making a decision. As the first or second most valuable item on a balance sheet, when making a real estate investment or divestiture decision it is critical to have all the related data available.

Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of work ahead of us, but as we move towards a solution providing both EAM and IWMS capabilities, we are continuing to invest in both Maximo and TRIRIGA. There will be what we call a bluewash release of TRIRIGA later this year, where the IBM branding, new language support as well as some additional functionality to support new FASB (federal accounting standards board) regulation changes will be introduced. We are looking at new functionality for Maximo as well. The 7.5 release came out earlier this year, and new capabilities to support Health, Safety and Environmental and Field Service Management are also in the works.

We are spending lots of time educating our sales teams and partners and reaching out to customers to share our strategy and vision, and these activities will continue into what is quickly turning into a busy fall. Look for information on TRIRIGA’s annual user conference (http://userconference.tririga.com/home.php) October 18-20 in Henderson, NV. There is also the fall best practices FMMUG meeting being hosted by JC Penney and Johnson Controls in Plano, TX October 16-18 (http://fmmug.org). both of which will give our users a chance to collaborate and exchange ideas.

Reach out with comments and questions…until next time!

Bridging the gap across the seam

2011-08-01T07:30:00-04:00

The title of this blog is a tongue in cheek amalgamation of two terms that have come up a lot in the last couple of years with respect to supply chain management, and is the 2^nd blog in our series on supply chain management.

The first is 'bridging the gap'. This is a common euphemism for a lot of topics, but in this case I'm referring to bridging the gap between direct and indirect supply chain processes.

Historically, direct supply chain refers to the processes and procedures for procuring goods related to the production of finished products. Conversely, indirect supply chain refers to the procurement processes related to maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) goods.

The concepts identified by direct and indirect supply chain long pre-date the advent of computerized inventory and procurement systems. Back in the ‘paper days’ the delineation was necessary. Procurement was a laborious and manual process, and there were many physical differences in how the two were carried out including the manpower used to perform them.

Fast forward to 2011 and the gap between the two is not nearly as clear. Inventory and purchasing computer systems specifically geared towards direct or indirect supply chain are shying away from making specific claims about what the system is designed for. Take Maximo for example. The leading product in the Enterprise Asset Management space has long contained functionality to support a customer’s MRO procurement requirements. In the past decade, our customers are using the product for new and varied business requirements that were not originally intended. Add in a host of specific functionality for various industry solutions and you can start to see the line between direct and indirect blurring further. At this point I will stop short of calling Maximo a production system, but the debate is insightful.

The second term I merged into the title is referring to a topic that has come up regularly in meetings of the Maximo Supply Chain User Group (MSCUG), and that is the question of ‘where to draw the seam?’

The ‘seam’ refers to the imaginary boundary between processes done in a maintenance system and those done in an ERP system. Advances in integration technology have allowed users to implement a myriad of integration scenarios. There is no single solution that works for every implementation. At the end of the day what matters most is to start on paper, and not in the technology of your integration. What are the requirements that need to be met? Who are the stakeholders? What roles will be accessing what information and when? What does their daily work consist of? These are just some of the questions that need to be answered before any solution should be architected.

This blog is specifically designed to raise more questions then it answers. The ‘gap across the seam’ is different for everyone’s implementation. If I’ve made some of my readers at least a bit anxious about some questions they had not approached then I have succeeded, because now I’d like to offer up the assistance you will need to tackle this. I’m not asking you to approach IBM about us designing out your solution (although we do that very well). I’m asking you to consider attending a meeting of the MSCUG at the next Maximo Utility Working Group meeting to be held in November (more info at the MUWG website, click here), and also attend the next MSCUG webinar: "Overview of Maximo Contracts and how Oglethorpe Power Re-engineered their Service Contracts with Maximo" This will be held on August 9th, 2011 at 11AM Eastern time. More info can be found by clicking here. As Mary Gorczynski pointed out in her introduction to this series of blogs discussing supply chain management, (Link here) the MSCUG enables you to network with peers encountering the same challenges with supply chain management.

Stay tuned for our next blog in this series, which will come from one of the Maximo clients who is a member of MSCUG, later this year. In the mean time if you have any questions/comments regarding Maximo’s supply chain functionality, please comment on this blog.

Brazilian C.N.A. gets highlighted at PCTY ANZ

2011-07-27T08:31:56-04:00

Today's blog comes from our reporter Pam Denny on location at Pulse Comes to You Australia.

Over 800 individuals gathered yesterday for IBM Tivoli’s Pulse Comes to You (PCTY) in Melbourne, Australia. At the second largest PCTY, attendees networked and interacted to learn from IBMers and Business partners on the latest functionality and products, and from other attendees on implementation best practices.

After Adrian Hocking, IBM Australian Country Manager, welcomed everyone to Melbourne and the Pulse Conference, Joao Perez, Vice President of Worldwide Tivoli Software Sales, kicked off the conference with his session on Unleashing Business Innovation thru Service Integration. Detailing examples of how multiple, diverse Brazilian farmers use RFID technology to track their cattle (for more on Maximo's role at C.N.A see our previous blog) and enabling internet connectivity on airlines, Joao highlighted IBM’s Smarter Planet initiatives thru increasing instrumented, interconnected and intelligent devices and functionality.

Glenn Wightwick, Director, IBM R&D Australia, then described IBM’s new research lab in Melbourne, which was started in 2010. With its focus on Life Sciences, Natural Resources and Disaster Management, Glenn described a few of the exciting research projects it is pursuing, including a close partnership with the researchers at the University of Melbourne. Jamie Thomas, Vice President of Tivoli Strategy and Development, closed out the kick off sessions by detailing the implementation evolution of Cloud Computing in Enterprise Solutions, along with new, facilitating tools including the Universal Graphical Orchestration tool.

After the initial kickoff sessions, attendees broke out into multiple interactive sessions lead by IBMers, business partners and clients. One of the highlights of these sessions was done by Anthony Honaker, Director Maximo Product Design and Development. Anthony’s session on the Maximo roadmap, included information on development principles, functionality focus and the power of the TRIRIGA Product within the Maximo portfolio. Other key client presentations included Sydney Water’s discussion of their recent successful upgrade to Maximo 7.1, the University of Western Australia’s implementation of Version 7.1 using Work Flows and minimizing application customizations, and Connect East’s implementation of the $2.5 billion construction East Link Project using Maximo to maintain its assets. Brian Downey, IBM Architect for Maximo Solutions, delivered a standing room only session on Maximo Planning and Scheduling, highlighting its features and benefits during a live product demonstration.

Networking and interaction between all attendees continued throughout the evening. Everyone agreed that they were all looking forward to another day of packed information scheduled for the second day of the conference on Thursday, July 28th.

Check out pictures from the event (more will be posted as the event continues) on Flickr.

Health, Safety, and Environment -- Front and center as the #1 priority for most asset intensive companies

2011-07-25T09:31:22-04:00

Today's entry comes from Terry Ray.

In May’s blog, I noted that Health, Safety, and Environmental (HSE) concerns and needs were increasing at most asset intensive companies. After spending considerable time researching many companies’ mission statements, corporate objectives/priorities, and/or social responsibility, I am more convinced than ever that HSE is the number one priority at most, if not all, asset intensive companies.

Some of the research has also shown that there is a strong connection between reliability and safety, and safety and production best practices. One of the research documents I uncovered was “Learning from the Piper Alpha Accident: A Postmortem Analysis of Technical and Organizational Factors” published in 1992. For those of you who are not familiar with Piper Alpha, it was a North Sea oil & gas platform that suffered an explosion and subsequent fire in 1988. The document concluded “…that separating safety and production is not the best strategy, and that safety must be an integral part of the production process. In the same way, for example, the manufacturing industry has discovered that inspection alone does not provide quality, but that quality must be the responsibility for everyone in the production line.”

The importance of HSE is increasing and many companies are already achieving benefits by extending enterprise asset management functionality such as incident management, investigations, management of change, action tracking, regulatory compliance, etc. to address broad areas such as health & safety, operational risk management, product stewardship, and corporate responsibility.

Your perspectives on the importance of HSE and future needs and solutions are appreciated. Until next time, stay safe….

How will the TRIRIGA acquisition enhance the Maximo solution?

2011-07-18T12:30:00-04:00

For today's blog I was able to interview George Ahn, President & CEO of TRIRIGA, an IBM Company in order to provide an overview of the acquisition and benefits to IBM.

First a bit about George. He has been the President & CEO of TRIRIGA since 2005 and involved in the enterprise software for more than 24 years. He brings extensive leadership experience in the technology and software industry to IBM with the acquisition of TRIRIGA.

Now for the interview.

Question 1: Can you tell us about the history of TRIRIGA?
George: TRIRIGA was founded in 2000 and quickly established itself as the market leader in the Integrated Workplace Management System market, also referred to as IWMS. This category of software is characterized by five core modules - real estate management, capital project management, facility space management, facility maintenance management and environmental sustainability - built on a single technology platform. Since our earliest versions, the world's leading organizations, including more than one-third of the Fortune 100 and the majority of the US federal executive branches, consistently selected TRIRIGA to manage two or more of these core components of TRIRIGA to streamline their real estate and facilities operations. TRIRIGA's offerings also received critical acclaim from leading industry analysts, such as Gartner.

Question 2: How does the TRIRIGA solution strengthen IBM's strategy for Smarter Buildings?
George: Global and U.S. studies have identified smarter buildings as the greatest opportunity to reduce environmental impacts and costs of energy, waste and greenhouse gases, and help ensure compliance with regulatory and corporate governance mandates. TRIRIGA provide a unique set of capabilities to measure, manage and reduce the cost of buildings through improved facilities operations, accelerated building retrofits and increased facility space utilization.

Question 3: Can you tell me about what differentiates TRIRIGA from other vendors in this market?
George: TRIRIGA is differentiated from other vendors due to three core strengths:

a deep set of pre-built functional processes for real estate and facilities that generate measurable cost savings,

a set of web-based designers that allow IBM Global Business Services, business partners and customers to configure and reconfigure these processes to match customer-specific requirements without changes to source code;

and deep experience and expertise gained from successful implementations within the world's best run companies and public sector agencies.

Because of the comprehensive approach taken by this approach, the savings can be significant. As an example, TRIRIGA delivered an integrated real estate management system for General Electric that generated more than US$1 billion in real cost savings.

Question 4: What benefits can clients expect from this acquisition?
George: Organizations that implement TRIRIGA can expect greater efficiency and effectiveness from their real estate and facility management functions, higher return on their facility assets and lower energy costs and environmental impact. Nokia used our offerings to reduce the number of systems used to manage their real estate and facilities from 62 to a single global instance of TRIRIGA. The company also avoided an automatic lease renewal which saved them more than 2 million euro annually. In addition, the firm reduced its global space footprint by 17 percent. All of these benefits translated into measurable cost savings that amount to millions of dollars per year.

Question 5: What can we expect to see in the near term future?
George: Following the acquisition, IBM has invested significant strategy, development, services and support resource to expand TRIRIGA into many different countries around the world - making these market-leading capabilities available to many more companies and public sector organizations. These investments will also translate into more innovation, delivered faster to help customers achieve their goals of smarter buildings.

Question 6: How do customers and prospects find out more details about TRIRIGA?
George: Anyone interested in more details should visit the TRIRIGA website or contact their IBM Maximo or IBM Global Business Service representatives.

To gain a better understanding of what TRIRIGA has brought to this market and to view some proof points, please see the following links:

Stay tuned for future posts on Facilities Fridays from the TRIRIGA team.

Maximo lights up Alaska

2011-07-11T12:30:00-04:00

For today’s blog I interviewed Jason VenHuizen, Vice President of Products and Technology at Interloc Solutions, an AAA rated Maximo implementation business partner in the US & Canada, responsible for implementing IBM Maximo Asset Management at Alaska Municipal Light and Power (ML&P).

Take a look at the interview.

MaximoMary: Jason, please tell me a little bit about your history with Maximo.

Jason: I have been working with Maximo for 13 years and was part of PSDI, before it became MRO Software and then IBM. I’ve been with Interloc Solutions, implementing Maximo solutions now for 5 years. I specialize in technology and customized applications, which I have written from the ground up in many cases. I have worked with nearly nearly every vertical and done a great deal with SAP, Oracle and JD Edwards integration with Maximo.

MaximoMary: Tell me a little bit about Alaska ML&P and their asset management needs

Jason: When the power is out in Alaska, it is a bit more noticeable than in other areas of America. Take for example during the winter when you have 20 hours of darkness………you notice when the lights aren’t working & you can’t just “open the blinds to let the natural light in”! So they need Maximo to ensure uptime.

Alaska ML&P is the largest energy producer in Alaska and services about a quarter of a million people, including downtown Anchorage and the Air Force and Army bases. In addition, they have recently been working on a joint power plant with Chugach Electric, to replace one or two plants. So that’s a lot of people counting on power!

For more information about Alaska ML&P check out their website.

MaximoMary: Why did ML&P choose Maximo?

Jason: ML&P was using an EAM solution on the HP3000 system until it was no longer supported. They were in search of an EAM solution that could integrate with all of their existing processes in the quickest time. Maximo met this requirement and is now used for their Work Management, Inventory and Calibration (preventive maintenance on meters) processes. Influencing the decision was the fact that Maximo is used by many other government agencies in Alaska, including Alaska Water & Wastewater Utility (AWWU)…….a proven record across the state. In addition, since ML&P already had a lot of their processes designed, they needed a solution that was flexible and could integrate with these existing processes, to minimize rework.

In the future they plan to expand the IBM footprint to include Tivoli Asset Management for IT as well as Tivoli Service Request Manager.

MaximoMary: How can followers find out more about the Maximo implementation at ML&P?

Jason: We will be going live in August and here is the press release covering the implementation, ML&P Awards Maximo implementation project to Interloc Solutions.

To learn more about Interloc Solutions and to engage with them for your implementation, upgrade, or customization of Maximo, visit their website,

2 Significant Maximo Announcements

2011-07-06T08:35:33-04:00

Today's blog comes from Rob Bloom.

Two significant product announcements, Maximo 7.5 and IBM Intelligent Building Management, were announced in Q2.

The combined Spring Maximo Utility Working Group (MUWG) and Maximo Supply Chain User Group hosted by Duke Power May 9-11 provided Maximo 7.5 exposure to over 300 attendees from 85 organizations. IBM was well represented at the meeting to speak about the numerous work and asset management enhancements that were driven by our clients. In addition, several key EAM analysts were briefed in advance of the release and the product was extremely well received.

The product momentum continued on June 9th with the launch of Intelligent Building Management (IIBM). The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City provided the perfect backdrop to showcase how IBM can help organizations manage energy, operations, and space and achieve higher levels of cost savings, operational efficiency, reliability, and sustainability. The agenda was powerful with Tulane University and Consolidated Edison of NY presenting, and clients, partners, press, and analyst were given an introduction to IIBM by Dave Bartlett, Vice President, Industry Solutions who led a tremendously engaging discussion on “Listening to our Buildings.” The event concluded with a series of networking workshops that provided IBM subject matter experts the opportunity to reinforce our leadership position in Smarter Buildings with IIBM, Maximo, and TRIRIGA. IBM now has leadership positions in two markets; EAM with Maximo and Integrated Workplace Management Systems (IWMS) with TRIRIGA

As you can see, we have a great deal of momentum in the marketplace and as always, appreciate your feedback on the value of our solutions to the marketplace.

Searching for a Supply Chain Management Network?

2011-06-27T12:30:00-04:00

With almost 50 different Maximo User Groups out there, you may have missed the Maximo Supply Chain User Group (MSCUG). Since supply chain management continues to be the hottest “word cloud” topic for social media searches, I thought that it was about time that we dedicated a series of blogs to this topic.

For starters, today I will give you an overview of the MSCUG and then I will enlist members of the steering committee to launch future blogs on topics you are interested in. We are relying on your feedback to address the topics that interest you most, so please do comment on this blog with your feedback.

The MSCUG was launched in June 2009 and currently has 79 members, 9 of which are on the steering committee. The objectives for this group are to provide:

communications between the MSCUG and IBM
information directly from MSCUG on technology, usage and developments
user experience concerning the application of Maximo Supply Chain, to include Materials Management, Warehousing, Mobile, Procurement, Contracts, Receiving, Materials Accounting and Invoice Processing
user experiences concerning 3rd party add-on applications that integrate or enhance Maximo Supply Chain functionality
a Maximo Supply Chain support network to exchange information and knowledge with other users
strategy and best practice documents developed by the group

Our steering committee members this year include:

Terri Jackson – Southern Company – Chairperson
Fuzzy Merritt – Duke Energy
David Johanning – National Cooperative Refinery Association
Mary Belman – Southern Power Company
Trevor Cothron–Tennessee Valley Authority
Cristy Bennett - Oglethorpe Power Corporation
Joe Jordan - Mosaic Company
Kevin Buonagurio – IBM Maximo Architect and Designer
Ron Wallace – MUWG Liaison - IBM

The MSCUG meets jointy with the Maximo Utility Working Group twice a year and holds topical webcasts quarterly. Maximo users in any industry who are using Maximo for their indirect supply chain are invited to join the group.

For more information about the group, or to join, check out the website.

MSCUG also has a group on LinkedIn.

Topics that we plan to cover in the next few months include an overview of the indirect supply chain, the impact of supply chain management on reliability, cost savings, compliance, and supplier diversity. After that we plan to dive deeper into topics such as inventory optimization, investment recovery (selling off assets) and the use of hand held devices.

Based on your feedback we will plan to have monthly installments on supply chain management, so if this is an important topic to you, please provide your feedback (comment on this blog). Besides joining and attending a MSCUG meeting, where else do you have the opportunity to hear the latest in the direction of Maximo for supply chain management?

Let us hear from you!

From Cattle to Crystal, Latin America Manages Assets

2011-06-20T12:30:00-04:00

Today’s blog comes from Carlos Tunes Sa Correia, Maximo Latin America Sales Leader.

Everyone has assets…….that’s a fact! And we are seeing more and more “new” sectors engaging to use IBM Maximo Asset Management to manage their assets. Places where you might not have thought of previously. For example, in Latin America Maximo is now managing cattle, crystal, baked goods and cinemas, in addition to utilities, transportation, healthcare and the other more traditional sectors.

What is driving more and more “new” sectors to consider Maximo? It is simple, businesses are looking to improve efficiencies in hopes of improving the bottomline ROI. This trend is seen everywhere and even more important in difficult economic times.

Anything that impacts production can impact revenue. More and more clients are looking to improve business efficiencies by focusing on:

Reducing operational cost
Improving service quality for customers (to maintain and grow customers)
Managing risk (environmental regulations, etc)

Let’s take a look at how Maximo is used across Latin America.

At the Brazilian Confederation of Agriculture and Livestock (C.N.A.), Maximo provides traceability for 24 Million “Live Assets” for Brazilian livestock producers. In 2010, revenue from foreign cattle exports for Brazil was $4.8B, with expectations of growing to $5.5B in 2020. The volumes and complexity of this market are mind boggling!

Let’s take for example a few years ago when there were “mad cow” out breaks across the world. The main question that had to be answered for livestock producers was “is your cattle safe?” Cattle producers had to guarantee that their cattle was safe & not infected, and this was in addition to their normal processes for a dynamic market.

The main business challenge was simple…..there was no end-to-end integrated system. The 3 main systems (Animal transfer protocol; traceability database; and health & quality control of food production) were isolated with different architectures.

Once C.N.A. implemented Maximo they were able to integrate all business supply chains (private companies, rural associations, government agencies) with a scalable and flexible solution for a growing business. Maximo provides traceability and reliability through clearly defined rules and responsibilities and process automation to enable operational cost reduction.

Now to answer your question of “how do I know if the beef I’m eating is safe”……..Maximo manages work orders for vaccines and through individual identification “chips” you have a record of all locations that each cow was in, thus guaranteeing it’s safety and providing the data required for government approvals prior to exportation.

In the future C.N.A. foresees expanding “chip” usage for traceability.

Next up, Cristal Chile, which is one of 3 players in the bottle market, with 76% of the domestic Latin American market in 2010, worth $210M. They have 2 main plants, 1 in Argentina with 11 production lines and 1 in Chile with 3 production lines. Currently they produce 2500 different bottles that require 5 production line changes a day. Interestingly, the majority are wine bottles (63%).

The production of bottles for wine, soda, etc produces small profit margins and requires constant focus on reducing operating costs. Time is money, so just like with any manufacturing plant, high availability and reliability of production lines are crucial. Maximo plays a key role in Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) for Cristal Chile, from planned maintenance to preventive to predictive maintenance…….all play a role in delivering operational excellence. When “man and machine are in harmony” as they like to say, production lines are delivering product and revenue.

To learn more about their operations, check out the Cristal Chile presentation from Pulse 2011.

We have now gone from cattle to crystal, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention a few other sectors where Maximo is found in Latin America. Maximo can also be found at:

Cinepolis, a leader in the entertainment industry in Mexico and Latin America. Maximo enables Cinepolis to implement best practices across their facilities (movie theaters, projection rooms, food and shopping venues). With Maximo, Cinepolis was able to cut corrective response times in half from 16 days in 2008 to 8 days in 2010. Their focus for the future will be to integrate Maximo with their ERP system and to create virtual modules for TPM and preventive maintenance. To learn more, check out their presentation at Pulse 2011: http://pulse.vportal.net/?auid=225
Bimbo Group, the largest food company (in sales) in Mexico and bakery in the world, utilizes Maximo for Transportation to ensure on-time deliveries with their fleet of 44,000 vehicles across Mexico and the US. Logistics are key especially when you are talking about the freshness of baked goods!
Vale, the 2nd largest mining company in the world and Brazil’s largest logistics provider, utilizes Maximo from end-to-end …… from the actual pelletization process, to the fleet requirements, to railroads (2nd largest railroad in Brazil), and finally to ports for exports. Having a comprehensive, integrated enterprise asset management system enables Vale to manage operations across 5 continents and across a diverse set of assets and plants. They find value in preventive maintenance and by having a system that is smart, they have been able to reduce labor costs by as much as 50%.

As you can see, if you have assets and/or services that require asset availability, you need Maximo! What sector will we reach next? If you have ideas, comment on this blog.

Rail Summit in La Gaude draws key industry leaders

2011-06-14T11:58:24-04:00

Today's blog is a collaboration of feedback from our key IBM Maximo Transportation specialists: Ken Donnelly, Carey Clarke, Rob Powell and Ed Jones.

In case you missed it, last week the IBM Business Solution Center in La Gaude, France hosted the Maximo Rail Industry Summit. There were 90 participants from all over Europe, as well as some participation from North America. With 11 presentations, an innovations panel, separate tracks for rolling stock (trains) and linear infrastructure (track) and an "immersive" tour of IBM Live Integrated Solution Prototypes at the Global Industry Solution Center, the attendees had a wide selection of content. Feedback from attendees was very positive and we expect to have a similar summit in Europe in 2012.

It was great to see key rail industry leaders including Norweign Rail, KiwiRail, SNCF and Ned Train present their stories on topics ranging from Conditioned-Based Maintenance in the Rolling Stock track to Modeling Linear Solutions and Mobile Solutions on the Linear track. Business Partners including Accenture, CapGemini, Motorola, OXplus, Syclo and Zebra were also active and many were sponsors for the event. As we've seen at Pulse, when industry leaders get together to share their stories, everyone can benefit and learn new approaches to solve similar challenges.

In addition to client presentations we had participation from the Maximo Architects providing rail related solutions - Carey Clarke (Maximo for Transportation), Ed Jones (Maximo Linear) and Rob Powell (Maximo ACM). The clients commented very positively on the ability to meet and connect with our software architects. Each of the architects presented a topic, with the second highest overall ratings given to the "Modeling Linear Assets at KiwiRail" presented by Ed Jones, with assistance from Don Beahm of Accenture. The top talk was delivered by Laurent Troger, President of Services for Bombardier Transportation, who presented "Condition Based Maintenance & Maximo in Transit Rail".

Maciej Guzek, from AUIT, an IBM Business Partner shared this on the summit: "I had a chance to listen to people who actually use the transportation solution - which was great, as well as their willingness to share the experience and knowledge. In my opinion having dedicated, industry-specific conferences is a great idea and you have done a really good job." Maciej works with PKP, a railway in Poland that recently purchased Maximo Asset Management and found having the summit enabled PKP to have access to the architects and clients in order to ask questions about both Maximo and the implementation process. We'll have to wait to see if PKP can share their success story at a future rail summit.

Cyril Delaitre, from the French National Railway SNCF and main sponsor of this event, also provided a good overview of the event. He said, "This meeting was a great opportunity to share best practices between the Rail companies participating. It outlined that each of us have the same needs concerning the use of Maximo products. The expo at the IBM La Gaude Global Solution Center convinced us that mature solutions do exist for our industry. We can also see that there are perspectives to increase our efficiency, using IBM Products with RFID chips for example. Connecting to other processes now appears to be ready for the rail industry and bringing us new business opportunities".

Take a look at photos from the event here.

Let us know what topics you'd like to see addressed in the next Maximo Rail Summit.

Facilities Friday (a day early): IBM's new solution for Smarter Buildings

2011-06-09T11:00:00-04:00

Good morning...it's about 6:40AM on a rainy Thursday here in Massachusetts as I begin to type this. Why am I up you ask? It could be the hungy, week-old baby in the next room, but no (don't worry, mom's up too), it's smarter buildings that is on my mind, so I thought I would write a quick blog since today is our smarter buildings forum in New York city. We are gathering in the "big apple" with customers, partners, IBMers, press and analysts to celebrate the launch of our new integrated solution for Smarter Buildings - IBM Intelligent Building Management. In my last blog, I wrote about the value of an integrated smarter buildings solution, and eluded to the fact that there were still "a few missing pieces to our puzzle". I didn't want to let the proverbial cat out of the bag, but the piece I was referring to is indeed IBM Intelligent Building Management.

Let's talk about the new product. Our new solution for Smarter Buildings, IBM Intelligent Building Management, is an integrated software offering that combines real-time monitoring with facilities and event management capabilities. It is the only enterprise solution that integrates energy management and facilities management into one offering. The integrated solution is designed to help building owners, operators and facilities managers analyze and reduce facilities operations and energy expense and improve overall asset management, reliability and sustainability. It is designed to allow customers to aggregate, normalize and optimize energy and asset utilization across a portfolio of buildings, across multiple Building Management Systems.

IBM Intelligent Building Management will enable:

Collection of energy and operational metrics into a central warehouse for enterprise wide analytical and optimization capability
Use of industry leading analytics, powered by business rules technology from WebSphere ILOG JRules, which has proven 5 percent annual energy savings and 8 percent annual facilities operations savings at a mature IBM facility.
Centralization of real time events for consolidation, correlation and to initiate actions (e.g service requests).
The initiation of work orders for anomalies detected from application of analytical rules on energy and operational data.
Single Role based view of the building data to Visualize energy, environmental and portfolio performance metrics and launch in context to asset, work management and event management and other operational tools.

Visit the new IBM Intelligent Building Management web page and Smarter Buildings web site for more information, and please check this blog often as we will be recruiting some "guest writers" to provide more insight around the new solution and it's intended application in the real world. Also, please check out what GreenBiz has to say: IBM Unleashes Advanced Software Solution for Smarter Buildings.

And be sure to follow our "Building Whisperer" Dave Bartlett on Twitter to learn more about what we are doing to make our buildings smarter. Dave will be leading the charge at our smarter buildings forum in New York today where we announced the new solution.

And coming up in July - "Don't Forget the Data Center". I hope to have a "guest blogger" for that :)