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The efficient operation of infrastructures is highly dependent on the design and the quality of work planning process. AI-supported central deployment planning supports increasing the efficiency of field team deployment. With the savings of well over 10 percent achieved in asset service, utility companies can achieve both shorter response times to customer requirements and a significant increase in their key performance indicators.
Use of AI in central resource planning
Planning operations means making a lot of decisions. Using artificial intelligence may reduce the decision-making efforts drastically. At the same time, work plans are created that enable the fitters to work more efficiently.
The automation of shift planning supports dispatchers in designing stable, efficient and employee-friendly unit work schedules.
The manual scheduling effort taken over by the automated planning, the users can focus on coordinating difficult construction sites. However, the AI-based decision support system provides the optimal decision for all assignments.
The system works more or less like a good-natured GPS navigation system. If a wrong turn is taken, an alternative route to the destination is suggested based on the new situation. This means that unforeseen events, such as a unfinished construction site or the absence of employees, are automatically included in the next planning run.
The optimized automated planning enables dispatchers to focus intensively on critical work and is the linchpin of positive company development:
- Dispatchers can provide qualified work preparation despite constantly changing constraints.
- Field personnel always receive well-prepared plans.
- Acceptance of the benefits of longer-term planning is growing.
- Early identification and correction of bottlenecks before they become effective.
Increasing satisfaction of dispatchers and field crews
The automation of standard tasks and the flexible adaptation of the work plans lead to increased satisfaction for both dispatchers and field crews.
In addition to order-related criteria such as priority, required resources and execution time, most of the decision parameters revolve around the employees themselves. This starts with the daily and weekly working hours, the team efficiency by planning of assignments with the least number of interruptions and ends with a reliable planning for the working day. The entire working environment becomes much more relaxed.
Multiple processes are possible when scheduling work. These processes may be vastly different. However, the three most relevant processes are the “self-dispatching,” the “centralized dispatching and automated dispatching.
1. Self-disposition
In many companies, field personnel receive their work in packages. They decide for themselves when they take on which activity. Their criteria do not necessarily correspond to the company's objectives and therefore may generate additional costs. Decentralized scheduling works well as long as similar or almost identical tasks are processed in manageable areas.
However, the efficiency of a team decreases with
- Increasing variety of tasks to be carried out by the team
- The geographic areas becoming larger and
- The qualifications of the field personnel vary more and more
However, merging of processes, divisions or even companies plays often a decisive strategic role in today’s business.
2. Central dispatching
In order to increase efficiency, many companies turn to manual central scheduling. Central work planning enables making global decisions and helps identifying inconsistencies in the workflow at an early stage. Companies speak of efficiency gains of up to 15% for personnel costs in Asset Service. All aspects that are important for a smooth workflow can be optimally prepared in a central office.
Advantages:
- Optimal route to and between work sites with sensible daily work packages
- Correct scheduling with external companies or colleagues
- Effective utilization of the qualifications of the entire team
- All necessary materials are packed
- Easy identification of time without work and making sensible use of them
- Fair distribution of work among colleagues
However, increasing efficiency is not guaranteed. The entire organization must agree on new ways of working and accept change.
Disadvantages:
- The field personnel lose the freedom to plan their favorite tour when applying central scheduling.
- The planners play the decisive role in the overall process. They have to cope with the considerable effort involved in scheduling seemingly unimportant work.
- The foremen who used to organize the work are losing their authority and are now only technical and personnel supervisors.
- Those responsible for maintenance can no longer autonomously pass measures through to the field personnel.
Any efficiency gains are therefore extremely dependent on whether the entire organization really lives this changeover or not. If one of the four participant groups drops out of the process, the organization is very quickly caught up in the mills of decentralized planning again.
One of the main weaknesses of manual centralized scheduling is its permanently high need for decision-making. Decisions that an AI can easily take over.
3. Automated dispatching
Automated scheduling combines the advantages of the previous planning strategies and offers additional benefits:
- Reducing the immense effort involved in central scheduling.
- Increases employee satisfaction.
- Improved KPIs for the company due to the global view (e.g., meeting deadlines).
- Additional tasks, such as replacing all door locks, are automatically scheduled and carried out without attracting attention.
- Operations continue even if the dispatchers are unavailable.
- Automated planning provides always an up-to-date basis for decision-making.
The change in planning strategy is increasing the workload of fitters. Times that the fitters previously required for planning and work preparation are now used for productive work. The planning effort take over central functions. As can be seen in the third step, these can be effectively taken over by an AI.
Bundling through long-term planning
Leveraging exciting potentials requires taking a closer look at the future. One such potential is the strategic bundling of work to reduce the number switching operations.
While manual planning is usually only detailed for a few days ahead, capacity planning analyzes the entire worklist for the next year and longer. By assessing the entire order backlog, work can be combined to reduce costs for work preparation as well as reducing the number of switching operations. This capacity planning is executed before automatic scheduling and allows for bundling of work.
Exploiting potential with capacity planning
Considering asset service data for a longer time sets the basis for decision-making. Strategists can use this planning tool to minimize or avoid bottleneck situations, plan necessary capacity adaptation or outsourcing of tasks.
Internal company decisions on construction, outsourcing or expansion of the service business can also be discussed and implemented using real figures. Externally planned projects and unspecific expenses can also be taken into account and scenarios simulated. Several simulation runs with different conditions (e.g., different implementation times for a project) allow possible solutions to be compared and the best possible operational scenario to be identified.
Thinking Ahead with Automation in Asset Service
The Qualicision decision tool opens the doors for many other functionalities in the future. Examples of this include the automatic creation of switching requests based on the work assignments bundled by Qualicision, the integration of material-related processes or automatic redispatch in the event of a fault.