A unique business model with its own challenges
Kati’s business model differs significantly from that of many Finnish industrial equipment manufacturers: the company both manufactures and maintains equipment solely for their own drilling operations. As a family-owned company, the link between the two business areas is close, but their nature is very different. Drilling operations deliver project-based work to clients, whereas the equipment manufacturing and maintenance side aims through a continuous process to ensure that the machines remain modern and operational.
A key challenge for Kati was coordinating maintenance tasks and equipment updates. Two different teams were responsible for planning these processes, but the actual execution was handled by a single fitters' team. With an Excel-based operating model this frequently caused difficulties in scheduling and dependency management. In addition, documenting the work was challenging, resulting in insufficient data quality from various installation and maintenance tasks.
“The Jira system implementation has significantly improved our management of changes related to the continuous development of our machines. Through a single system we can ensure that execution and documentation remain up to date, which increases the reliability of our machines and clarifies the overall management. In addition, the system enables efficient, real-time tracking of changes targeting multiple machines.”
— Joni Männistö, Machinery Safety Manager, Oy Kati Ab
Collaboration with Ambientia
The solution was designed together with Ambientia’s expert team. We quickly identified ways to integrate the maintenance and change-management processes more tightly with each other in order to ease work coordination. In addition, we evaluated Kati’s overall architecture together with the client’s specialists, because we wanted to ensure that the implemented solution fits and, where necessary, integrates in a sensible way into the rest of the system architecture. We clarified the role of the different systems so that there would not be too many of them, and so that at the same time we could build a sustainable roadmap for future enterprise architecture.
Concrete benefits – maintenance and change management processes:
- The annual maintenance task lists for core-drilling rigs, auxiliary machines and closed-circuit equipment were digitalised, which made the planning and monitoring of maintenance operations easier.
- The preparation, scheduling and assignment of maintenance tasks to the maintenance team were implemented into a work management system. The maintenance team primarily uses the lists on mobile devices, so the workflow and forms were designed to be quick and simple to use.
- The basic data and ownership of the machines and equipment are maintained in the system, which also provides visibility into maintenance history and upcoming work and modifications.
- Kati personnel can, via the solution, submit change-requests regarding machines and equipment. In the processing of change-requests the impacts, costs and labour-hours are assessed. Implemented change-requests are scheduled on the fitters’ task lists and coordinated together with maintenance work when the machine is being maintained. The interaction between the processes was made more transparent and efficient.
“Already during the proposal request phase, Ambientia showed a genuine interest in developing our operations and wanted to understand our internal processes. They offered a cost-efficient solution that adapts flexibly to the varying needs of our organisation.” — Joni Männistö
Outcome
The end result was a functioning whole, deployed in a cost-efficient way. It enabled easier coordination of work in a more transparent manner and improved execution and documentation of maintenance tasks. Simultaneously a foundation was laid for more high-quality data collection of the maintenance process, which can be leveraged more effectively in subsequent digitalisation projects.
