Business executives can achieve otherwise unattainable cost-savings, regulatory risk mitigation, and operational resilience outcomes by leveraging dedicated, cloud-supported digital platforms to advance their operational data collection, collation, analysis, storage, retrieval, and reporting processes—regardless of the functional area where these solutions are applied.
This premise was established and reiterated during multiple expert panel discussions, software solution demonstrations, and other sessions held at the 2022 Benchmark Gensuite® Impact Conference in Orlando earlier this year. And as recapped in this blog post, one such session—Solution Innovation Workgroup: Quality & Operational Programs—covered the roles that Benchmark’s suite of cloud-supported enterprise software solutions play in advancing the efficiency and effectiveness of companies’ legacy processes for equipment compliance and reliability management and assurance.
Watch the full session recording:
Explore Benchmark’s Suite of Equipment Tracking and Management Software Tools
In brief, Benchmark’s Andrew Cox, Vice President of Subscriber Services, and Cecily Sexton, Senior Leader of Subscriber Services, explained how the professionals tasked with the management and assurance of equipment performance reliability and compliance face a daunting task—regardless of the size and sophistication of their organization.
Typically equipped with little more than e-mail and manually administered data storage systems (i.e., spreadsheets), these professionals are expected to assemble and sift through troves of data themselves. This oftentimes manually collected data might describe everything from equipment performance and standards compliance to the status and administration of maintenance and service needs, spare parts inventories, and other minutiae of day-to-day capital goods management. This, of course, risks human error and delay in the collection, analysis, storage, and necessary dissemination of critical operational data.
But, as Cox and Sexton explained, Benchmark’s suite of equipment management software tools enables their users to protect, support, and maintain their mission-critical assets and equipment by provisioning them with complete and continuous visibility into these items’ reliability performance and standards compliance over their full lifecycle.
For instance, with Benchmark Gensuite®’s Equipment Tracker, end-users are equipped with a centralized, remotely accessible, and automatically updated system of record for their equipment’s operational data. This enables equipment compliance and reliability management and assurance professionals to digitally manage equipment lists and monitor specific details of distinct assets, including their location, part numbers, work orders, and SOPs. This software generates equipment-specific barcodes and QR codes for easy, open access to equipment information in the field, which enables site staff to submit work order requests and assign both scheduled and once-only work order and inspection checklists for completion on desktop or mobile.
Interoperable with Benchmark Gensuite®’s Maintenance Manager, Equipment Tracker facilitates the performance and recording of preventive maintenance inspections, the management of work orders for permits and regulatory compliance assurance, and the tracking of assets’ performance history, including malfunction analyses and end-of-life determinations. Moreover, Equipment Tracker may be integrated with Benchmark Gensuite®’s Lockout Tagout (LOTO), Safety Risk Assessment (SRA), and Inspection Tool applications, which enables users to maximize the platform’s efficiency-add advantages to their asset management, safety management, and compliance and task management functions.
Case Study: Wakefern Food Corp.
For evidence of these advantages and insight into how they may be captured, participants in the Solution Innovation Workgroup: Quality & Operational Programs heard from environmental engineer Dan Valleau, who presented on behalf of Benchmark equipment tracking solutions subscriber Wakefern Food Corp.
With some 80,000 employees employed across the co-operative grocery retailer’s approximately 360 member locations, Wakefern’s equipment compliance and reliability management and assurance needs are, in a word, sizable. But as Valleau detailed at Impact 2022, Benchmark’s solutions are advancing the efficiency-add of two of Wakefern’s ongoing Inspections & Maintenance (I&M) projects.
Valleau explained that Benchmark’s Equipment Tracker is enabling Wakefern to soon operationalize a new Event Type for their Equipment Inspections & Maintenance (I&M) program, complete with a new remotely accessible, adjustable, reportable, and verifiable emergency generator event form to support the recording and tracking of generators when they’re used for testing, maintenance, and emergency and voltage reduction response.
“The way that we’re currently keeping our operation logs for our generators is on paper. And these papers that are kept on-site are old and stained, sometimes they get ripped and smudged, so it’s a nightmare to try and read the data on there. We’re getting away from this by moving to an electronic format. And with our new electronic event form, we’re able to easily record, securely store, and reliably retrieve data describing our [generators’] compliance with our air permit compliance plans required by the state, as well as some maintenance aspects, such as whether the oil, filters, spark plugs, belts, hoses, and other components were assessed or replaced before, during, or after the run event. Looking ahead, we’re working with Benchmark to integrate this event form with an auto-monitoring system through Equipment Tracker,” explained Valleau.
And with Benchmark’s ODS Sentinel, which is interoperable with Equipment Tracker, Valleau explained how Wakefern is advancing its processes for tracking the use, maintenance, and compliance assurance of its CFC-containing refrigeration equipment.
“We’re working with Benchmark to build a digital system where enter in all the compliance and performance data from our various assets into Equipment Tracker, and have data pertinent to our refrigeration equipment fed into ODS Sentinel so that the two applications mirror eachother. This will help us minimize redundant data entries, reduce the risk of misentering model numbers, and other common human errors,” added Valleau.
The Road Ahead:
Wakefern’s experience is just one of many Benchmark subscriber success stories. As of March 2022, Benchmark’s equipment tracking and management software solutions counted more than 37 subscribers, who use them to track more than 3 million pieces of equipment across more than 2,100 sites.
As we head into the second half of 2022, the development of enhanced usability and provision of seamless user experiences are, together, the focal points of Benchmark’s Equipment Compliance & Reliability product roadmap. Stay tuned!
