From Post-it notes to Digital Sharing
Post-it notes and Excel spreadsheets are what a lot of ports use to keep track of important maintenance tasks. Associated Danish Ports (ADP), who operate ports in Fredericia, Middelfart and Nyborg in Denmark, have abandoned their post-it note system and are the first port operator in Denmark to choose to implement the maintenance system SERTICA, which helps modern ports get a broad overview.
With 45 employees and large geographical areas of operation in their ports in Fredericia, Middelfart and Nyborg, there is a lot for Associated Danish Ports (ADP) to keep track of. Berthing, cranes and gear must function optimally when shipping companies lease space and want their ships to continue on as quickly as possible afterwards. That is why all the knowledge that is on Excel spreadsheets, yellow post-it notes and in the memories of individual employees, are important keys to creating the broad overview that is crucial for a modern harbor. To achieve this, ADP have chosen the maintenance system SERTICA from Logimatic to gather all the most important data, history and knowledge for the three ports.
Chief Engineer at ADP, Kenneth Nielsen, explains: “Our employees are usually here for many years, so they accumulate crucial knowledge. With the new system, we are able to share that knowledge with both old as well as new employees. Photocopies and notepads are just not sufficient anymore because instant sharing and access to knowledge is essential these days, so SERTICA is perfect for gathering all our knowledge digitally,” he explains.
Simple and User-Friendly
When Chief Engineer Kenneth Nielsen participated in a seminar arranged by the Danish Maintenance Society in Odense in November 2008 and was introduced to SERTICA, or rather LOGIHOLD as it was called back then, he realized that it was the answer to ADP’s longstanding search for a system that would provide a better overview of the maintenance activities of their ports.
“We thought that a system of this kind needed first and foremost to be simple and user-friendly. The system could not be too complex as it would be too much of a challenge to introduce it into the whole company. SERTICA is intuitively designed with a tree structure similar to the pathfinder in a PC system, so it is very user-friendly and easy to access and contains all the functions that we need to meet our needs,” says Kenneth Nielsen from ADP.
ADP expects that SERTICA will be implemented in the organization over the course of 2011 and that a lot of jobs will go into the system. It is not just maintenance tasks that they have in mind, but also an overview of facility documentation and resource planning.
“We would like to integrate SERTICA broadly in our organization, so that external tradesmen, for example, are also able to log in to the system. In this way we can all get our jobs into the system, which provides us with a good overview, so that we can focus on maintenance instead of running an “ambulance service” which just responds to sudden breakdowns. This means that both we and our customers will experience a port with more machinery that works as it should,” Chief Engineer Kenneth Nielsen, ADP concludes.
