It has been an eventful few weeks for the teams at BPD Zenith. The Australia-New Zealand (ANZ) contingent flew to Orlando, Florida to support and attend MaximoWorld 2018 where BPD North America were exhibiting and proud Gold Sponsors.

MaximoWorld did not disappoint. It was yet another successfully run event from the Reliability Web group. The attendee numbers grew to 1,200 this year and was a sell-out event! Registration was closed a week early which reinforces the desire of passionate Maximo users to support their own standalone event.

Having a reliability-focused body running the event helps to steer the conversation towards Asset Management and alignment of Maximo to overall business strategies. The agenda covered more than just technical know-how, but also ensured businesses are preparing their Maximo system for the best possible outcome. The sharing of experiences and ideas using the different ways Maximo navigates the same task is well facilitated by the MaximoWorld event and the reward lies in ensuring you don’t back yourself into a corner.

For me, the resounding messages were that effective Asset Management is reliant on the foundations of a system set up right the first time and fostering a culture of high quality data is paramount. Having a logical Location and Asset Hierarchy using smart nomenclature conventions, which also align with finances asset registry requirements, pays dividends time and time again.

Inventory Management in Maximo is a must have for effective job costing. Time invested in the completion of work plans with a 80:20 approach ensures the tradesperson spend their time effectively. Nothing provides more ‘bang for your buck’ than ensuring work is completed in the window planned! The takeaway is to pay particular attention on compliance to the maintenance plan. Scheduling tools commonly provide that compliance reporting and oversight on resource management.

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to mention the many stories I heard on how mobility has impacted organisations. When you put information of a job and that asset’s history into the hands of the tradesperson, you save more than just paper. Throughout the event, I heard stories where mobility reduced the time to move a Work Order to the closed stage by over 30 days. Utilising voice to text technology means customers could collect paragraphs of information rather than 2 words. Alignment to the right mobile application was where the business case justification stories where bountiful.

On a personal note, it was great to reconnect with not only our North American colleges but also our business partners DataSplice and PowerPlan while there. We also had the pleasure of sponsoring our client Todd Munro from ConnectEast who ran a few DataSplice demos and talked about ConnectEast’s successful DataSplice mobility implementation.

Here is a short interview conducted by IBM during MaximoWorld with myself and Todd Munro from ConnectEast in the hot seats.

Dates for the MaximoWorld 2019 event have been released and are set for August 6 – 8 2019. You can express your interest here. MaximoWorld 2019 looks to be another event not to be missed and we have signed up as Gold Sponsors once again!