The 4 quadrants described in the article “Operations
Innovation & Transformation – the 4 Types” positions the lower right
quadrant as a strategy for using a team of human assets in a new way.
In this quadrant, teams of specialists (with the same or
different areas of specialization) are grouped to provide value improvement to
a group of physical assets, and the group of physical assets can be used as a
“fleet” or as a “chain”. This is much more
than a passive “help desk”. One example
is where specialists use real-time benchmarking and other tools, working with
new business processes with the physical assets and the dedicated workers, to
unlock value of themselves and the physical assets.
In the following diagrams, a team is located in different
sites at the moment. This example has 4
physical assets, A through D, and specialist 1 is mobile (working from a hotel,
home or in an office within the enterprise), and specialist 3 is in an operations
center. In the left-hand diagram,
specialist 1 is supporting or improving the performance of physical assets A
and B, and specialist 3 handles the physical assets C and D. In the right-hand diagram, a change in
performance in asset B triggers a workflow and specialist 2, who is on call or
is assigned by the team supervisor, handles asset B. Specialist 1 does not receive workflows for
asset B unless the team supervisor changes the assignments. Overlapping assignments are also used,
especially when multiple disciplines or specializations are involved. Both use the same integrated and federated
information, and these specialists become champions to help all like operations
and equipment improve performance.
In the following diagram, a workflow “brings the work to the
worker”, using the same integrated and federated information, on-line
performance applications, and human workflow.
The supervisor(s) can easily change assignments, and the workflow can
include escalation, which can be guided by the performance applications’ output
compared to thresholds (simple calculations of time to reach a threshold).
The strength of these workflow is to help specialists
intervene early enough, using standardized and trustworthy data, focused on
trends. This processing of information
is automated as much as possible.
The specialists spend most of their time working on
improvements instead of processing data and analyzing previous performance
problems, and their decisions. As a
result, major overhauls are safely and reliably delayed, equipment performance
is improved, and operators trust the equipment more to help increase
performance at each physical asset.
