Italian utilities firm Italgas adopts hands-free solution from Realwear and OverIT to empower their field service engineers...

RealWear, the world’s leading industrial hands-free knowledge transfer platform for frontline workers today announced that Italgas opted for RealWear’s HMT-1Z1 intrinsically safe platform running OverIT’s field services software to support the digital transformation of its operations.

Italgas reports that with the RealWear-OverIT field services solution, they’ve moved beyond the consumer tablet, taking their digital transformation to the next logical level with a purpose-built device for restricted zones. They have already seen huge productivity gains with RealWear by solving complex and risk-sensitive job tasks even in ATEX Zone 1 restricted zones.

“We’re thrilled that our HMT-1Z1 systems are helping Italgas accelerate its digital transformation efforts, improving safety and reliability,” said Andy Lowery, RealWear’s CEO.“We are committed to delivering intuitive hands-free systems to accelerate knowledge transfer to the next generation of workers.”

 

The benefits of field service engineers going hands free...

Utility field workers performing maintenance work on gas infrastructure frequently encounter potentially hazardous situations that require immediate remote support and visualization of real-time IoT data of specific assets. Beyond just managing work orders, Italgas’s field services crews are required to visualize data and read technical documents while performing manual work. Italgas declares that keeping hands free via voice-controlled systems safely resolves complex issues quickly and avoids additional travel or costly service downtime in extremely restricted zones where gases are present.

At Italgas, gas distribution means guaranteeing network safety, service continuity and system efficiency. To improve service quality and safety, increase distribution system efficiency and have a positive impact on the environment, the third largest European utility has been investing heavily in the digitization of its operations.

"The innovative solution enables Italgas’s field workers to reference documents (e.g., technical datasheets, multimedia content and asset history) while using their hands to perform the maintenance on a specific asset..."

The utility first deployed the automated scheduling of work orders in 2004, pioneering the adoption of a Field Service Management solution to allow its workforce to avoid the need to visit the office to collect tasks in the morning or physically hand off documents at the end of their shift. In 2012, to efficiently manage its approximately 44,000 miles of pipelines and 7.6 million assets, Italgas became one of the first utilities to use consumer devices for its workforce.

The implementation of OverIT’s Field Service Management solution was a success and Italgas quickly moved onto an even bigger challenge: how could workers operate hands-free and benefit from the features of the tablet app while performing manual maintenance tasks? Italgas' Digital Factory, the utility’s innovation department, developed the idea of using head-mounted devices (HMDs) and assisted reality. Currently, the innovative solution enables Italgas’s field workers to reference documents (e.g., technical datasheets, multimedia content and asset history) while using their hands to perform the maintenance on a specific asset.

Data collection via voice provides further efficiency, enabling users to update asset information without any manual input. Italgas’s goal is to increase the number of field workers supported by the solution and expand its functionality. At Italgas, the knowledge gained from long-tenured workers is critical. Capturing their expertise and transferring it to less experienced technicians on the job advances digital transformation for the utility.

 

---

Further Reading:

• Discover more news and analysis from OverIT on Field Service News here 
• Visit OverIT's website here 

---

We asked Bill Pollock to predict what he thinks 2020 will bring. Typically, he went beyond the next 12 months and horizon-scanned into the not so distant service future where failure to keep-up could mean the end of your offering.
There has been a growing shift away from manufacturing toward the Servitisation model for decades already. However, while the manufacturing model is a well-entrenched, deeply-rooted model that everybody understands; the Servitisation model is still not anywhere near being as widely understood – even within the services sector.

The transition from break/fix, to network services, to self-help, to remote diagnostics/support has been steady, and has followed a logical evolution over the years. However, the move toward Servitisation requires more of a “leap of faith” as well as a whole new mode of operating (and pricing) for which many services managers are still not familiar – or comfortable.

This trend has carried on for decades – and the services sector is just about ready to “rock and roll” with it moving forward; however, even some of the key (and more savvy) players are not yet 100% certain that they have it right with respect to re-engineering their overall service delivery structure; services support organisation; KPIs and metrics; services support policies, procedures and processes; pricing, accountability – and the list goes on. As such, this trend will positively carry on throughout 2020 – and well beyond – as each major group of services organisations (i.e., leaders, followers, “wait-and-see’ers”, skeptics, and all others) begin their respective transitions.

The evolutionary prospects for Servitisation are quite simple: the market, as a whole, will need to see some prime examples of success in their respective vertical and/or horizontal services segments before making the plunge. They’ll need to move beyond all of the “failure” and pratfall stories before feeling more confident. They’ll need to hear some success stories – and, in their own segment. Bank/financial organisations will need to see how others in their field have succeeded, and what the positive results have been. The same will go for the medical/healthcare segment, manufacturing/industrial segment, and so on.

Most organisations will also need help with how to price “power by the hour”, “airplanes in the air”, and other “new” ways for pricing their services. I suspect there will be an uptick in the number of case studies, Webcasts and conference sessions focusing on these and other related areas. Servitisation is – and will continue to be – a big deal for years to come.

"Customers no longer will be pleased simply with equipment that is working, sensors that are communicating, and devices that are operating..."

Organisations are also transitioning from providing corrective maintenance to predictive maintenance, and this trend continues to shape the industry moving forward. Corrective maintenance has worked for many years because, basically, that’s all the industry had to offer. From the break/fix, call the manufacturer’s hotline, days; through the current remote diagnostics and repair days, there has been a common thread running through our industry: Some piece of equipment fails, a call is made (i.e., either by phone, in the past; or, today, remotely from the equipment itself) and a corrective action is taken. 

However, these are examples of the soon-to-be-bygone OTR (i.e., On-Time-Response), MTBF (i.e., Mean-Time-Between-Failure), MTTR (i.e., Mean-Time-To-Repair), FTFR (i.e., First-Time-Fix-Rate) and PM (i.e., Preventive Maintenance) days. Through Predictive Diagnostics and Predictive Maintenance the need for any On-Time Response will be highly diminished, as will the need for MTBF, MTTR and FTFR KPIs/metrics, etc. Over the coming years, there will be the need for “new” metrics, such as MTBPF (i.e., Mean-Time-Between-Prevented-Failures); MTTR will be measured in minutes or seconds, rather than in hours or days; FTFRs will be normalised as everything will get fixed in a single attempt, whether it requires a single “try”, or multiple “tries”; and PMs will virtually disappear (or at least be replaced by another PM = Predictive Maintenance). 

There will be a whole “new” way of delivering service, as well as measuring the success of the organisation through an entirely “new” set of KPIs, or metrics. [By the way - I have already written many times about the need for “new” KPIs/metrics and, respectfully claim the rights to MTBPF!] 

Customers no longer will be pleased simply with equipment that is working, sensors that are communicating, and devices that are operating – they are now beginning to look more closely at how their systems, equipment, sensors and devices are working together, in their behalf to get the job done. A services organisation that merely keeps individual systems or equipment up and running (i.e., maintaining high levels of uptime), but does not ensure that they are all working together to effectively and efficiently execute the company’s business, will ultimately find themselves being replaced by other services organisations that do. The clear winners will be those organisations that “get” Servitisation, and not those that do not.

"There will need to be an industry-wide educational 'push' as to what Servitization really is..."

Again, what will move the needle in 2020, is clearly communicating to the marketplace what failures to avoid (and how to avoid them), and what successes can be had (and how to achieve them). There will need to be an industry-wide educational 'push' as to what Servitisation really is, what it can do for the organisation (and what will happen if they don’t embrace it), what the ultimate value propositions are for transitioning to this “new” model, and what some of the best success stories have been.

Further, most services organisations are not currently using their respective Field Service Management (FSM) solutions to their full capabilities. The most successful organisations may come close, but there are few that eke out all of the capabilities that may otherwise be offered to them. Some may augment their FSM solution with a home-grown Excel spreadsheet “patch”; others may be using their Sales & Marketing Management (SMM) or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solutions for activities that their FSM could (or should) be able to support; and still others may not even be aware of the full spectrum of capabilities they may have right at their fingertips. Again, it becomes an educational process that should be driven by the FSM solution providers themselves through the offering of strengthened professional services, such as customer portals, training, train-the-trainers, etc.

As some FSM solution providers may be focusing more on developing Augmented Reality (AR), Merged Reality (MR), Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML) based applications to bolster their offerings, they may be relatively deficient in focusing on the basic, or “core”, components of their solutions and, thereby, miss the opportunity to help their customers/users get the most out of their offerings.

Services organisations will also be relying much more heavily on apps and mobile devices in support of their service delivery performance in 2020. Society, as a whole, is relying more and more on apps and mobile devices for communications; and, in many cases, the services sector is leading the way.

Most FSM solution providers are providing their customers/users with more apps and customer portals to facilitate their use of the solution, as well as for communications with their remote support providers. Every year, a higher percent of business is being conducted remotely, and the need for more functional mobile communications is increasing commensurately. The IoT stands for the Internet of Things; and in this regard, humans may also be considered as one category of “things” that the IoT helps to connect. 2020 will see the proliferation of all types of “things” connected to one another through the IoT: systems, equipment, devices – and people. In fact, the numbers of connected things will likely to continue to grow at an accelerated rate in 2020 – and beyond. The more connectivity there is, the better the delivery of service can be.

 

"The move toward AR and VR is beginning to grow even faster as more installations have been deployed, and more success stories are making the rounds..."

 

Companies will also continue to expand their use of AI-powered field service technology and tools. Basically, companies that are already using AI technology in support of their services operations are much more likely to expand its use over time – and, probably, very quickly. However, companies that do not yet employ the use of AI in their services operations typically lie on either side of the fence: either, “we need to do it now”, or “let’s wait and see how this all works out.” The pressure to embed AI in their services operations will be so intense, however, that there is likely to be a surge in usage throughout 2020 and successive years.

Primary uses of AI include the powering of a chatbot capability; the ability to identify key target markets for selling/upselling/cross-selling products and services; and the ability to make their overall services operations work much more productively and efficiently.

Just as Virtual Reality (VR) has made watching American football games (and European football games, as well) easier for the layman to understand, it is also making it much easier for field technicians to repair equipment in the field. No more bulky documents or manuals are required, and training programs can be short-cut (to a certain degree) as AR and VR, merged together into MR, can lead the technician to a “perfect” fix, first time, and every time.

The move toward AR and VR is beginning to grow even faster as more installations have been deployed, and more success stories are making the rounds (at trade shows and Webinars, etc.). In fact, the merging of AR and VR has sent out a signal to the “Wait and see’ers” that they may be missing the boat on AR as it is already merging with VR – all while many of their competitors are beginning to implement AI and Machine Learning platforms in support of their services operations. The time to move is now – before it’s too late in terms of having your competitors ending up being better equipped to support (and market to) their targeted customer base.With the rise of IoT-connected devices and smart homes, many new challenges lie ahead for the field service industry. The rise of IoT-connected devices and smart homes provides a major value proposition to customers, as well as to the FSM solution providers. However, what also comes along with the benefits are a number of potentially serious consequences.

For example, once virtually everything is connected, smart systems will likely become more susceptible to power outages, hacking and various types of breaches in security. The analogy is: before watches, people used sundials to tell time. Then watches could help them tell time – until they either wound down, or the batteries went dead. Today, if the global satellite network goes down (e.g., as a result of space debris, solar flares, etc.), many things we all take for granted will stop working, including a partial/temporary halt to our ability to tell time, make change, or communicate to one another via our mobile devices.

As an example, as I have been writing this article for Field Service News, I have used a pink post-it note to cover the camera on my iMac. At the same time, Alexa is probably listening to anything I say without me even thinking about it. Further, somewhere across the globe, there is probably someone standing outside the front window of a home and yelling at Alexa, Googol or Siri to “remind me what my password is for the front door security code.” What the "expert” hackers can do to outsmart smart homes or businesses will only get more invasive – and potentially dangerous – over time (i.e., the invasions of privacy tend to happen first, with the “patch” or “fix” coming later). As such, the need to provide continual connectivity PLUS protect the privacy of the customer/user will be paramount as more and more smart implementations go into play.

Making projections for 2020 in the services industry is relatively easy. Basically, everything you have gotten used to is going to change. Here's my summary:

• The “good guys” will make everything better; and the “bad guys” will try to make everything worse
• Every time you make a mistake, the whole world will find out about it virtually instantly
• Service fixes will be completed faster – but you won’t always be aware that there was a fix
• Service pricing may or may not be more expensive – but it will certainly be different
• New start-ups will enter the market; but some old standbys will be forced to depart
• Most of the KPIs/metrics you’ve used for decades will be replaced
• The most successful services organisations will follow the lead of technology – not the competition
• You think that today’s Merged Reality applications are too futuristic or too soon? Wait ‘til tomorrow, when everything is merged (i.e., connected)

 

---

Read more from Bill at Pollockonservice.com 

 

 

Librestream’s Onsight AR Enterprise platform is now optimized for Samsung’s latest ruggedized tablet, the Galaxy Tab Active Pro...

Smart Field Force Management Aimed at Communications Service Providers...

Earlier this summer we introduced you to three companies that we felt were set up to bring some significant value to the field service sector. Now as we look forward to 2020 here are three more companies that could potentially help drive your field service business forwards..

While Augmented Reality (AR) offers a range of benefits, why do challenges around its implementation still exist? Field Service News’ Deputy Editor Mark Glover explores some of the technology’s major milestones, including its role in the industrial environment, and asks what’s needed to make it a ubiquitous part of an engineer’s toolkit...

Copperberg’s Thomas Igou outlines the four key technologies that he believes are going to be shaping the future of the aftermarket in the coming years...

What reality are you using in your service programme? Virtual or augmented? Or are you leaning towards mixed? Mark Glover attempts to simplify the technology while keeping an eye on the real world.

Tech giants Google and Microsoft have released practical hands-free Augmented Reality devices aimed solely at enterprise. The hardware could spark an AR revolution in service, prompting boards to consider a technology that may, at one point, seemed a risk. Mark Glover considers what impact this could mean for service professionals when putting together a use-case for AR's adoption...