Automation of Attiki Odos Motorway Maintenance
Situation
AKTOR S.A., J&P AVAX S.A. and Pantechniki S.A. are some of the largest construction companies in Greece. For more than fifty years they have played a dynamic role in the country’s milestone construction projects in both the Public and Private sectors. Their experience ranges over all the various fields of the construction sector and they have extensive know-how in state-of-the-art technology projects worldwide.
These companies have participated in the construction of ATTIKI ODOS, the most sophisticated modern motorway in the region of Attica and Greece in general undoubtedly. The periodic and exceptional electrological and electromechanical maintenance of ATTIKI ODOS is handled by a syndicate of the three companies called “E & E/M Maintenance A.O.”.
The purpose of “E & E/M Maintenance A.O.” is to provide precautionary and corrective maintenance services for all electrological and electromechanical equipment of ATTIKI ODOS, including the Integrated Toll and Traffic Management System (ITTMS), medium voltage power substations, power networks, road lighting, plumbing networks, pump rooms, building and tunnel security systems, SCADA, etc. “E & E/M Maintenance A.O.” employs 55 persons, mostly technicians and engineers, who are responsible for the restoration and maintenance of all the aforementioned systems. The technical staff needs to move to several points of ATTIKI ODOS during the day, so as to deal with the occurring problems.
Malfunctions and maintenance tasks are reported throughout the motorway and are recorded in the headquarters of ATTIKES DIADROMES S.A., the company responsible for the operation of the motorway. They are in turn forwarded to the secretaries of “E & E/M Maintenance A.O.”, who issue maintenance requests to the proper divisions. Currently, there are six infrastructure and equipment divisions: SCADA, Tolls, TMS, Electrological, Plumping and Coolant systems. The technicians and engineers of each divisions receive requests and perform corrective or maintenance tasks accordingly. They in turn issue a report about their corrective actions to their supervisors. All requests and tasks performed are tracked in paper forms, which are exchanged between persons involved via fax. In addition, personal contact is often required between technicians, secretaries and supervisors, which is not always possible due to the distributed work environment. For historical data and reporting purposes, all tasks were afterwards entered to a custom-made client application. This situation was very time-consuming and involved redundant work and too much paperwork.
The company wanted to move to a fully electronic procedure so as to reduce the time and costs required.
Solution
“E & E/M Maintenance A.O.” chose Nessos Information Technologies S.A. as its partner for the implementation of the new information system, a company which specializes in developing Enterprise Applications through its proprietary operational Business Process Framework™ platform which delivers technological enterprise solutions, automates and manages business processes.
Business Process Framework™ Workflow Platform
Business Process Framework™ product is a Workflow Platform which is produced by Nessos Information Technologies S.A. and Globo Technologies S.A.. It delivers tailor-made solutions for the design, automation and management of business processes.
Business Process Framework™ system includes a suite of powerful tools that enable users to design, automate, monitor, optimize and generally synchronize all business processes.
Most of the problems that may arise inside a corporate environment can be efficiently handled by integrating Business Process Framework™ Workflow Platform into the corporate information systems:
- Greater amount of human effort is spent for competing jobs than required for their implementations.
- Increased time responses to customer service requests due to bureaucratic glitches.
- There is a significant learning for new personnel so as to get familiar with corporate procedures.
- Increased completion times of procedures due to manual tasks, i.e. filling forms or sending faxes.
Project Overview
In order for “E & E/M Maintenance A.O.” to fully “automate the process of exceptional maintenance of A.O., Nessos’ Business Process Framework™ Platform was selected and set to operation from Oct 1, 2005, achieving full and smooth integration with the rest of the company’s production environment.
Through the networked environment of the application, 15 users (some of who are remote), who are involved in the malfunction handling process, completely automate their daily tasks. These tasks range from Infrastructure/Equipment Malfunction Report (secretariat users), Malfunction Restoration Report (people in charge of different Infrastructure/Equipment divisions) to Malfunction Restoration Inspection (maintenance supervisors), etc. Through electronic forms (“malfunction report papers”) users inform the system about all performed actions to restore malfunction in certain parts of the equipment.
Currently, the automated malfunction restoration procedure includes six categories of equipment: SCADA, TOLLS, TMS, ELECTROLOGICAL, COOLANT and PLUMBING systems. Depending on equipment’s category, malfunction restoration tasks are automatically routed to people in charge of the related divisions and all relevant electronic forms are filled out. The application supports automatic e-mail post to ATTIKES DIADROMES S.A., the company responsible for operation and maintenance of A.O., at the end of the restoration process. In the message body all actions performed by the involved employees for the restoration of the malfunction are described in detail.
Benefits
The significant contribution of the management and personnel of “E & E/M Maintenance A.O.” in tracing and analyzing the demands for parameterization of the Business Process FrameworkTM Workflow Platform in order to automate the process of exceptional maintenance of A.O., combined with the technological expertise of Nessos in modelling and automation of enterprise processes led to the following results:
Shorter Malfunction Restoration
The work cycle to restore a malfunction has considerably decreased. All 1000 and more malfunction events that take place monthly are served by the platform in minimal time.
Better Human Resources Management
The company’s staff is better utilized, since the application ensures proper and timely scheduled job assignment for all 15 users.
Cut Down in Operational Costs
By automating the business process, the company managed to reduce operational and production costs. No more faxes and papers need to be exchanged but only electronic forms.
Enhanced Communication
The application has established much more reliable communication channels among the employees. Secretaries, technicians and supervisors have no need to be in constant contact on the phone with each other, in order to be informed about the progress of a malfunction restoration.
Superior Monitoring and Reporting Mechanism
The performance and progress of any process can be estimated through proper dynamic reports and queries, providing a clear view of the motorway status. Indicatively, we mention some of the reports:
- Pending malfunctions from previous months. These malfunctions are illustrated according to age and cause of pendency.
- Main causes of pending malfunctions from previous months.
More Efficient Task Scheduling and Higher Throughput
Malfunctions are strictly categorized, resulting in precise and instant task scheduling. This has resulted in the minimization of the malfunction restoration time and the maximization of availability of the main E & E/M systems of ATTIKI ODOS. (increased from 97% to 99% in two months after the platform deployment.)