Background

Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) is responsible for the planning, development, construction, operation, and maintenance of the electricity transmission and distribution network in Northern Ireland.

As part of an ongoing drive to maintain the highest levels of safety and best work practices, NIE recognised a need to centralise and securely manage all calibration tracking for their calibration assets.  As NIE currently uses IBM Maximo to manage other parts of its network business, it engaged System Dynamics to migrate its calibration assets from an in-house system to Maximo. 

Solution

Using the Maximo work order application, System Dynamics migrated the existing calibration asset database to Maximo including: the owner and user of each asset, required frequency of calibration and next calibration date, and assigned a predefined task list (Job Plan) that is required to capture calibration results for the particular instrument .

System Dynamics also configured Maximo to use Dashboards to allow NIE to manage, capture, and monitor all calibration assets and activities appropriate to each NIE asset owner.  

Maximo is used to schedule the creation of calibration work orders by calibration frequency.  System Dynamics created scheduled e-mails that notify the respective asset owners at 6 week and 1 week intervals of the calibration assets that must be returned for recalibration.  The Maximo system is also configured to monitor the receipt of the Assets and enables NIE to escalate non-receipt where necessary.  

Maximo is configured to capture NIE and compliance specific information and uses generic job plans that have defined information requirements appropriate to each calibration asset.  Maximo is also configured to manage and monitor external calibration requirements and attaches any external calibration certification against the calibration asset through work order tracking and appropriate dashboards. 

Benefits

The System Dynamics solution enables NIE to:

• have full, accurate, and consistent visibility of its calibration assets,
• give advance notice of calibration to asset owners,
• ensure full, managed, and monitored compliance to the requirements of ISO 9001, scheduling the calibratio, capturing internal calibration results, and - where required - recording calibration certification for external calibrations.