Energy Services Company

Business Challenge

This international energy services holding company develops energy infrastructure and operates utilities for more than 30 million customers. Sustaining operational excellence is a must in the organization’s effort to deliver safe and efficient energy to customers.

However, with production and delivery operations that are so vast and sprawling, maintaining consistent performance monitoring and responsive maintenance was inefficient, and ultimately led to compliance breaches.

With SAP Plant Maintenance at the heart of its asset management processes, the company certainly had a platform that scaled to meet its needs. However, user experience challenges were causing issues on the front end:

• Multiple transactions to finish a basic process
• Too many screens to complete a single task
• Data inaccuracy and input errors caused delays in maintenance
• Inefficiencies increased risk of incidents & accidents and noncompliance
• Lengthy system searches

The Solution

Linx-AS user experience (UEx) consulting was brought in to evaluate the organization’s enterprise asset management processes, particularly the creation, execution, and monitoring of work orders for one of its natural gas pipelines in the western U.S.

Using the Linx-AS UEx Design Methodology and components of the Enterprise Solution Pack for EAM, Linx-AS designed roles in SAP Plant Maintenance that simplified and automated the critical EAM processes:

• Consolidated screens and fields in simplified user interface and role launchpad—eliminating the need to memorize countless transaction codes;
• Streamlined process for utility to maintain functional locations and equipment;
• Enhanced performance and accuracy with background automation and validation;
• Transformed work order process from 20+ screens to just one with only the necessary fields for the user;
• Automatically routed workflow from the functional location to the equipment, and then to the work order;
• Improved visibility and monitoring with one-click reporting for items such as open and overdue work orders.