Now, more than ever, nuclear plant managers need to make sound decisions based on integrated information around operational, financial, and regulatory risk factors. Information systems must tell a single story of the truth that crosses over traditional functional silos to integrate asset and work management capabilities. Decisions supported by this information will optimize resources, expedite design, and enhance quality. Using NextAxiom's Process Oriented Virtualization to integrate Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) processes ties together the information in Supply Chain, Finance, HR and Business Analytics into a single seamless process. Decisions, policies and practices built on this complete picture can make significant and sustainable improvements in capital spend, operating costs, and field force productivity.
As generators look to ensure safe operations, increase productivity and deliver returns to shareholders, the opportunity to link asset strategies to work execution can make certain that the right work is being done, at the right time, with the right equipment and by the right employees. Incorporating asset and work management systems with your Supply Chain and Financial information have allowed generation companies to:
- Collect more accurate information and reduce data entry time by up to 20%
- Reduce design time and work by up to 30% by leveraging with standardized processes
- Reduce the ongoing IT support costs by dramatically reducing customization and the number of applications used. Some organizations are able to reduce the number of applications by more than 50%
- Improve work and job bundling to optimize resource utilization and planned outage window
- Increased asset and field productivity by up to 30%
While the value of optimization is undisputed, the costs and organizational impact to capture these benefits have been astronomical. Utilities have been asked to pick between two options:
- Wholesale "rip and replace" to move the enterprise on an ERP platform. It requires the organization to endure an "open heart surgery" and a commitment to a multi-million, multi-year implementation where the benefits will be delayed to years in the future. It can also force the enterprise to adopt processes that don't recognize the unique requirements of the nuclear energy industry.
- Binding existing systems together with hard-coded business rules within SQL queries or based on traditional Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) technologies. Hard coded point-to-point interfaces are notoriously inflexible and costly to maintain. Solutions assembled around the EAI hub, the overhead quickly becomes prohibitive. As the transaction load increases (for example, additional applications), the infrastructure becomes overwhelmed, resulting in poor performance or failures. Continued development around the EAI hub architecture only exacerbates the problem by creating additional silos of information.
Now there is a third option. An option that preserves your investments in Asset and Work Management systems, can be implemented for a fraction of the cost in a matter or months, and embeds best practices from the nuclear community. Packaged NextAxiom Interface Solutions can be implemented without modifying or taking down the enterprise systems and will go live at a fraction of cost. Using EAI or other middleware technologies typically requires $4-10 or more to implement a solution for every $1 invested in the software license, whereas NextAxiom's Interface Solutions cost less than $1 in configuration for every $1 spent in software license.
Contact NextAxiom today to speak to one of our interface solution specialists.