By Terry Staff, Senior Account Manager.

Whichever industry you operate in, and whatever challenges you are looking to solve, a customised annual maintenance framework can support your organisation so you can get on with what is important, running your organisation and supporting your team.

In part two of our maintenance focus Terry discuses how routine maintenance helps to extend your assets longevity, reducing downtime to maximise efficiency, and improve safety. 

Why should you have an annual maintenance framework?

Creating a successful and effective preventive maintenance strategy is built on clearly defined goals, and KPIs. Maintenance of unified and/ radio communications infrastructure is vital to ensure continuity of service and back up when you need it, especially when the network is critical to your organisation. It guarantees you have the right strategy in place to prolong the life of your equipment, managing compliance and requesting support quickly, whether that be scheduled or reactive.

So, what does a personalised communication system maintenance program give you?

• A clearly defined plan that supports your communications infrastructure, hardware, and devices from deployment.
• The implementation of a set timeline for maintenance inspections scheduled against your requirements.
• Performance benchmarks to measure the KPI’s of your system.
• Efficiency and productivity success that justies the extra investment.

What strategy is best for your organisation?

Every organisations requirements differ. There are a number of considerations when deciding to implement the best plan for your organisation, and the elements that affect your operation. By grouping your assets into risk categories you can establish the correct level of support required for example, safety implications and cost of the downtime.

An annual maintenance agreement with Radiocoms is planned and documented, and will be created around your site’s specific infrastructure, hardware and devices, and a set level of comprehensive cover to specific KPI’s. Covering a period from one to five years, typically, the contract will include service support with the option to add in a layer of comprehensive cover that will support for example, 24/7/365 and equipment loans/replacements.

System failures can be disastrous should they involve business or mission critical communication infrastructure, however, organisations that have minimal infrastructure can often look to select a corrective maintenance plan as an option to support their operational requirements. Define your requirements by:

• Establishing your KPIs, and required metrics to create a reliable maintenance framework.
• Identifying the goals and defining the frequency of your maintenance requirements.
• Thinking about your maintenance KPIs and if they need to help support your goals as an organisation.

Radiocoms support three options – preventative, corrective, and reactive maintenance.

Preventative / predictive maintenance frameworks include a scheduled system check-up (normally six monthly or annually) to ensure equipment is working optimally, finding, and highlighting any potential issues or repairs and will provide you with benchmarks that support your organisations requirements. Frameworks can also include customised SLAs, software upgrades, and automatic scheduled backups.

Should this not be opted for at the time of deployment costs will be determined by the age and condition of the infrastructure, hardware and software onsite.

The second option is corrective maintenance and is performed in response to unexpected, or potentially critical system failure that requires immediate action to resolve safety and/ productivity threats. This is often selected as an additional option to an overall maintenance package.

The third, reactive maintenance (often referred to as an emergency call out option) is among the most common types of maintenance strategies adopted across numerous verticals; however, although there are no upfront costs associated and requires no planning, historically it has been proven to create additional, unforeseen costs and can often shorten the life expectancy of the infrastructure as the equipment is not regularly inspected to ensure it is working to the correct manufacturers specification.

Exploring the advantages of routine and scheduled maintenance programmes

• Reduce Downtime – If your infrastructure is business or mission critical you never know when an emergency might arise. When maintenance is planned against set time parameters you increase your communication systems reliability, reduce downtime, and eliminate the need for reactive maintenance. An on call field engineer will offer support remotely or onsite, so you do not have to worry about pooling resources from your own internal teams.
• Reduce Maintenance Costs – Significantly lower maintenance costs and save time by planning and scheduling in routine maintenance visits. Requesting remote / onsite support off a contract can be significantly lower in expenditure compared to requesting on an ‘urgently required’ basis. By regularly servicing equipment and maintaining it to the manufacturers specifications you will ensure it will perform to the excepted levels of its predicted lifespan.
• Instant access to expert advice and support – It is much more productive for you to focus on the more important aspects such as running your organisation. With a range of technical industry experts who can provide you with instant support, user guides and how to videos for employees you have support that is always available.
• Remote monitoring and support – Radiocoms offers remote monitoring for all of our clients’ systems either through a manufacturers software or engineer specific, this provides you with a proactive, prompt service whilst supporting our carbon footprint reducement scheme. Our remote support services monitor communications networks and have produced a material increase in the reliability of maintained systems as faults are identified and rectified at the earliest possible time. All of our engineers are security cleared to a Government level.
• Always on emergency support – No one knows when an emergency might arrive but should your infrastructure form part of a mission/ business critical communications system it can be imperative to have an engineering resource on hand. Services can include the capability to deliver escalation responses and resolve emergencies on a 24/7 basis either remotely or onsite. During high priority emergency responses a job ticket can be updated every 30 minutes by an engineer.

Terms and conditions may vary depending upon the services required.

What does a Radiocoms PMI checklist include?

Preventive maintenance programs can be complex, outlined within your agreement Radiocoms will:

• Outline the tasks required to complete the PMI
• Associate every task with a clear action and goal
• Include safety instructions (ie. required PPE and HSE parameters required)
• Record every action and the time taken
• Review the works caried out with the client and authorise with an appropriate signatory

After the site visit:

• Provide a written report
• Provide photos and/or diagrams to confirm the above

Conclusion
There are plenty of good reasons to have annual maintenance framework in place at a level that is suitable for your organisation. Many would argue that an annual maintenance contract can be seen as a waste of OPEX, however, there is one underlying factor until maintenance checks have been carried out there is no way of identifying system anomalies and with solutions in place such as a remote support early detection feature it can help to prevent catastrophic system failures.

Through any well planned and documented maintenance framework there should be a comprehensive level of data collected throughout the agreement to support the analysis of the performance of the equipment and to define expenditure for contract renewals/extensions.

Working with organisations throughout the world, Radiocoms support clients with varied maintenance and support services. Learn more about our support services here, or get in touch today to discuss your options.

Read Part One – Extended Warranties – Giving you peace of mind and budget control here >