Business Impact Summary
"The deployment of Ventyx Mobility represents a major step forward for our organization, helping us shift from disparate inspection systems to a solution that fully integrates inspections with the corporate asset management system.”
LEIGH SPRYLAN
CHIEF INFORMATION OFFICER
WESTERN POWER
Key Challenges
Western Power needed a solution to help them conquer specific challenges across the organization:
- Reduce operational costs, lower procurement costs and improve capital efficiency
- Gain greater efficiencies in purchasing, installation and maintenance
- Ensure network uptime to meet consumer needs
Solutions
Western Power relies on Ventyx solutions to meet critical needs across the organization:
- Ventyx Ellipse streamlines asset infrastructure to improve productivity, seamlessly meet regulatory standards, and reduce operating costs
- Ventyx Mobility helps access real-time data about the state of every asset, such as power poles and street lights, remotely from mobile devices
- Ventyx Critical Inventory Optimization analyzes and adjusts stock levels and reordering requirements on an ongoing basis
- Ventyx Axis provides business-to-business integration and web applications to optimize business processes between trading partners
Benefits
Western Power achieved significant benefits as a result of implementing Ventyx solutions:
- Clear view of worker availability and required skills
- Improved productivity
- Seamlessly meeting regulatory standards
- Reduced operating costs
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The Company
Western Power is an electricity networks corporation responsible for the transmission and distribution of electricity in the southwest region of Western Australia. Managing more than 96,000 km of power lines and 14,000 substations, the South West Interconnected System (SWIS) is one of the largest isolated electricity networks in the world. The company powers nearly a million homes and businesses and approximately 150,000 street lights each day.
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The Challenge
In 2006, Western Power embarked on a six-year strategic program to transform its operational systems and business processes.
Western Power’s trusted IT partners, IBM and Ventyx, supplier of Western Power’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) systems for over a decade, are central to this significant undertaking.
Having addressed its customer service delivery improvements, Neil Canby, manager, strategic program of work within Western Power’s Enterprise Solutions Partner division, explained the latest phase of the transformation process is about reducing the costs of operations through productivity, driving down the costs of procurement and improving capital efficiency. “In an asset-intensive industry, this means gaining a better understanding of our assets and greater efficiencies in their purchasing, installation and maintenance,” said Canby.
Maintaining the uptime of Western Power’s assets is key to ensuring the network is continuously and safely meeting the energy needs of its customers. Making maintenance more proactive has the potential to significantly reduce operational costs, as well as enhancing service delivery.
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The Solution
Western Power replaced disparate inspections systems with a mobility-enabled solution to make real time asset information available in the field, eliminating the paperwork and logistics involved in getting the right information to the right person within its 1,600-strong field force – wherever they are located.
Through its adoption of Ventyx Mobility solutions, Western Power will enable 1,600 operational field employees to access real-time data about the state of every company asset – such as power poles and street lights – remotely from their mobile devices.
“The deployment of Ventyx Mobility represents a major step forward for our organization, helping us shift from disparate inspection systems to a solution that fully integrates inspections with the corporate asset management system, enabling a more proactive asset-maintenance program,” said Leigh Sprlyan, chief information officer at Western Power.
For more than 10 years, Western Power has successfully streamlined its asset infrastructure with Ventyx Ellipse, the leading solution for Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) for asset-intensive industries. After a substantial re-evaluation of applications supporting the company’s core business processes, Western Power decided to further extend its use of Ventyx Ellipse, upgrading to Ellipse 6.3 to improve productivity, seamlessly meet regulatory standards, and reduce operating costs.
“Detailed information needed to manage company assets – from their location and structural composition, to worker availability and required skills – will help us optimize scheduling decisions and, in doing so, even more cost-effectively manage our workforce and contractors,” said Sprylan. “And advanced features, such as Geographic Information System (GIS) mapping, will further enhance our visibility of both the state of our assets and the work plan, ultimately improving our ability to manage the network.”
Western Power has also licensed Ventyx Critical Inventory Optimization (MCIO), software that helps analyze and adjust stock levels enabling them to cut inventory costs, eliminate waste, and ensure top performance. And Western Power will use Ventyx Axis, a hosted solution providing business-to-business integration and Web applications to optimize business processes between trading partners..
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The Result
"Ventyx Ellipse has strong standing in the industry for asset management, and we like that Ventyx stays focused on what they’re good at.”
NEIL CANBY
MANAGER, STRATEGIC PROGRAM OF WORK
WESTERN POWER
Canby said that Ventyx’s Mobility solution was the ideal fit. “As Ventyx Mobility integrates so closely with our Enterprise Resource Planning and Enterprise Asset Management systems, it can be used out of the box. It’s an example of how well their product strategy aligns with our vision.”
Operational efficiency and productivity is also being addressed by automating field operations through mobility. Work orders will be received in the field on devices such as laptops, tablets and PDAs, and staff will be able to report on progress in real time, sending immediate updates to centralized asset and workplan management systems.
Clear visibility of worker availability and required skills also improves allocation of resources. According to Canby, “GIS mapping further enhances our visibility of both the state of our assets and the workplan, ultimately improving our ability to manage the network.”
Western Power’s strategic program is also addressing another aspect of the asset management lifecycle – improving management of stocks of assets and streamlining business processes with trading partners.
The EAM platform, Ventyx Ellipse, is being enhanced through Ventyx Critical Inventory Optimization – intelligent, predictive software that identifies the optimal holdings of every stock item based on usage patterns and criticality, then automatically adjusts stock levels and reordering requirements.
And by moving ordering processes onto Ventyx Axis, Western Power is able to reduce the administrative effort of warehousing, logistics and financial transactions with its suppliers.
Canby says that, for Western Power, driving capital efficiency is an important goal. “We are currently spending nearly $1 billion (AUS) each year on building new assets and augmenting or replacing existing assets. We need a better understanding of our assets – their current state, how they operate and when they need to be replaced. This is something of an art – but we are moving to turn it into a science.”
This is especially critical when assets are located underground – a practice Western Power is increasingly adopting; predictions need to be more scientific and accurate, as assets are harder to inspect.
Canby says that Western Power has a holistic approach to asset management, which makes Ventyx a natural partner for the transformation project. “They share our strategic orientation. This allows us to focus on our core business and not worry about the technology, which is Ventyx’s strength.”
“Ventyx Ellipse has strong standing in the industry for asset management, and we like that Ventyx stays focused on what they’re good at. Their focus on asset-intensive industries means that Western Power doesn’t get ‘lost in the noise’ made by other customers in different industries...the focus is on us.”
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