Svenska Kraftnät
IFS Applications is playing a key role in helping Svenska Kraftnät, which is responsible for the Swedish electrical grid and the national supply of natural gas, to grow and improve its operations in Sweden and abroad. Greater traceability of maintenance work—a business-critical process for the company—and enhanced quality assurance are just two of the benefits provided by IFS.
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Needed To Manage Maintenance Procurement
With a network of 130-140 substations throughout Sweden and a relatively small headcount of its own, Svenska Kraftnät relies heavily on subcontractors for its maintenance undertakings. Not long after it was founded in the early 1990s, Svenska Kraftnät began to realize that it needed a reliable tool to help manage the specifications it produced when procuring maintenance providers. It was essential to have detailed knowledge of the assets it owned so as to determine the level and extent of maintenance required. And given the extent of its operations, there were simply too many changes being made for them to be handled using a paper-based system. Bertil Bartholdsson, project manager at Svenska Kraftnät, says, “What we needed was integrated IT support that enabled us to set up an asset data register that was easy to access combined with preventive maintenance software.”
IFS Applications Was Designed For Utilities—and Easy to Use
To determine which enterprise software would best suit its requirements, Svenska Kraftnät looked at a number of vendors and what they had to offer. After a careful analysis, the decision went to IFS Applications. Bartholdsson explains, “IFS was able to do what none of its competitors could manage—offer us a preventive maintenance component that was integrated with the document management and plant design software. All the information we would need to run our operations would be on one form. And speaking of components, that was another reason why we opted for IFS Applications. Because it’s component-based we were able to purchase exactly the functionality we needed.” That the application was easy to use was another important aspect underlined by Bartholdsson, who says that “having used the solution for some years and seen what others have to offer, IFS Applications is still the easiest system to understand.”
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Business-Critical IT Support
The main benefit derived from using IFS Applications is the support provided in the management of long-term projects, the core of Svenska Kraftnät’s operations. With its roots in the energy and utilities industry, IFS has designed its software to cover the entire lifecycle of an asset, from design to decommissioning. It also has an intimate understanding of the needs of the asset owners. “We need to be able to see the status of assets that are in operation as well as those that are to be delivered. IFS Applications lets us manage both types of status in one system. In the past it was fairly easy to manage repairs and updates, even if the documents and drawings were paper-based, because we didn’t do much building. But now we’re expanding and adding new assets in Sweden and Denmark, and all our drawings are electronic and in one system—IFS Applications. We wouldn’t be able to expand without the solution, so this is a survival issue for us,” says Bartholdsson.
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“We wouldn’t be able to expand without the solution, so this is a survival issue for us.”
Bertil Bartholdsson, Project Manager, Svenska Kraftnät
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Early Adopter of Web Solutions
Svenska Kraftnät saw the benefits of web-based solutions relatively early. With so much of its maintenance work outsourced to subcontractors, this is the ideal way to administer and follow-up their work. Bartholdsson explains, “We can configure our web portlets to match individual workers, technicians and administrators so that they know exactly what to do and what to follow-up. The jobs are there in the system—they don’t need to go looking for them.” The efficiencies gained also leave time over to work on more complex issues with subcontractors.
Traceability Essential for Quality Control
While IFS Applications makes it easier to direct the work of subcontractors, it also enhances quality assurance. Every job that is done, every item purchased is thoroughly documented and made available to those who need the information. With all the data in one, integrated system, users can be confident that the information is correct and administrators need not worry that essential data might be missing. For an organization like Svenska Kraftnät, it is extremely important that faults are quickly reported and resolved, and that the relevant authorities can be shown that all processes are documented and that the correct routines are in place. Moreover, the traceability and visibility afforded by IFS Applications makes it easier to adapt procedures and processes when the need arises. The document management functionality is also used to check the entire buy-sell chain for suppliers’ suppliers to ensure that the specifications laid down by Svenska Kraftnät have been complied with—another phase in which IFS Applications improves quality.
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