Execution is a moat you would need to cross for a successful POV trial

Starting an analytics Proof of Value (POV) is a great thing, congratulations to you and your team for getting started! Now that you have set up your hypothesis and formed a right team to own the POV trial, let’s focus on how to ensure that it turns out to be successful and leads the way for future implementations. 

Many great applications do not see the day of the light post trials, why? It is because teams often do not put enough focus on implementation and execution of the POV trial. We can look at the implementation as the probation period for any application/technology on the shop floor. As it is the first time you are introducing it to the O&M team, you should observe how they react to it? What insights do they like the most? How does this POV help you to get the fundamentals clear?

Key Aspects to Consider During Execution

Drawing from our extensive experience, we've compiled a list of aspects that should be your focal points during the execution period:

1. Acknowledge gaps in processes

Although POV trials are focused on a specific use case(s) in mind they do provide hints on other areas as well. Sometimes a lot of introspective insights point towards a maintenance (or any other) activity that could have been done better or the delay in taking the actions or even an inaccurate data capture. POV trials should be able to call for basic hygiene checks.   

2. Manage the initial change

Anything that changes the existing hierarchy of the information or action flow will have to be observed carefully. The introduction of a new application to your O&M team will make some cultural challenges as well. As your team starts using the application/platform, it will start getting various insights and recommendations on the operational behaviour of the asset, maintenance schedule, and energy usage, etc. Some of them are purely transactional in nature while others will focus on transformation aspects such as simplifying the data flow architecture or maintenance practices etc. How your team reacts to them and makes changes in the planning or operations schedules is going to be a crucial part of this POV exercise.

3. Cross validate the Insights

Don’t just blindly trust the insights that the new application is providing you. Go back to your team and apply the possible reverse engineering techniques or cross calculate the legitimacy of the insights. This may take time but mind that this is a one time exercise to ensure accuracy and reliability of the insights which should be performed thoroughly.

4. Be agile, get others involved as needed

As we realize some of the insights would call for the involvement of different teams for collaboration. For example, if a maintenance team has an insight on AHU’s performance and wants to further invest in data acquisition to be able to capture the data on a granular level then they should involve the IT team well in advance so that they can test the communication protocol, feasibility etc. and make the appropriate changes in the data flow architecture. 

Similar to this there will be numerous occasions where an implementation team (the one which is responsible to take care of the POV trial) will have to communicate with IT and maintenance teams. The success of the trial greatly depended on the inter-team communication. 

The trial should be able to align the individual objectives of the different departments with the organizational goal and if it can do that then there couldn't be a better win than that. 

If you like this article and found it insightful enough to share it with your peers then don’t hesitate a bit! Are you planning to introduce an asset performance management application to your O&M team? Not sure how to start an asset performance analytics trial? No worries refer to the previous article.