AUTOMATING THE EQUIPMENT REPAIR PROCESS
FOR ELECTRIC MOTORS
“Automating these processes has given us a 10-year competitive edge. With the help of Confluent and their custom PowerApps
solution, we completely reimagined our previous data collection, work logging, and
report generation processes, and improved productivity by an estimated 15 percent.”
Scott Melzer, Vice President of IT and Purchasing, IPS
Background
Integrated Power Services (IPS) is an industry leader in electric motor upkeep and engineering for continuous process, asset-intensive industries. It provides end-to-end service for electric motors and generators including repair, field maintenance, and sales. IPS specializes in servicing motors and parts for generating nuclear, wind, hydro, and fossil power, in addition to servicing machinery used in oil and gas, chemical, metals, industrial gas, mining, and paper production. Leveraging a new line-of-business solution built on Microsoft Power Apps and developed by Confluent, a
trusted Microsoft Partner, IPS re-imagined its previous data collection, work logging, and report generation processes. This redesign of operations resulted in increased efficiency and productivity, more visibility, higher customer satisfaction, standardization across multiple locations, and
a ten-year competitive advantage in the industry.
Business Needs
A $230 million industry leader with 1,000 employees and more than 20 facilities nationwide, IPS is the largest provider of electric motor repair, engineering, and maintenance in North America. Its diverse customer base is spread across the United States and Canada and differs across organization size as well as industry, ranging from wind power to oil and gas.
From initial receiving to final shipping, repairing customer equipment is a lengthy, multi-stage process with a lot of moving parts. At a glance, the process entails inspecting and disassembling customer equipment, quoting the customer on equipment service, performing repairs or maintenance (sometimes parts are in three different locations at one time), reassembling repaired equipment, performing a final test, and finally shipping the equipment back to the customer. With all of these work stages, different repair facilities, multiple items to track, and disparate paper forms, manual processes simply won’t work.
This antiquated process was exactly what IPS was using. While IPS did utilize an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, it only tracked materials and labor. At the end of every repair
service engagement, a customer report must be generated. These reports are the result of many data points collected throughout the repair process. The method for collecting these data points was paper forms. This approach was inefficient: the forms varied by motor type, and someone at IPS would have to manually enter the information into a central system, which could take anywhere from a few days to several weeks. Additionally, the forms IPS used to inform the final customer report were optimized for customer readability, not for internal IPS usability.
Solution
In an effort to streamline operations, improve tracking accuracy, provide customers with accurate reporting, minimize waste, and eliminate tedious paper processes, IPS decided to transform the way they worked by digitizing and unifying paper forms with a custom solution that would
solve these challenges. IPS then turned to Confluent to help get the job done.
Confluent helped IPS design, build, and implement a custom application specifically for motor repair. According to IPS, Confluent isn’t just a partner—they are part of the team, and understand both motor repair and programming.
At Confluent's recommendation, IPS chose Microsoft PowerApps for its custom solution. IPS first reformatted and digitized the many different forms according to optimal workflow rather than customer readability. In just six months, IPS and Confluent built a solution on PowerApps that created an electronic process that is independent of the ERP system, doesn’t use paper forms, and works no matter what language their data is in (SAP, Oracle, etc.). Currently, IPS is using its PowerApps solution at three of its facilities, with plans to incorporate it in all 20 repair facilities within one year.
While it only took six months to implement the Power Apps solution in one of IPS’ shops, the process is ongoing, iterative, and in constant refinement. The volume of IPS’ business combined with the technical and asset-heavy nature of machine repair required further innovation. Because the solution needs augmenting and fine-tuning to meet evolving business requirements, Confluent remains committed to helping IPS achieve its vision for how Power Apps can revolutionize the way they do business.
Already, end users of the Power Apps solution have resolved some common challenges, such as the issue IPS was having scaling photo aspect ratios for tablets—a step in IPS’ repair process is photographing and cataloguing machine and motor parts being repaired. IPS also struggled with locating motors and parts at any given time because they could be in one of three departments—repair, winding, or machining. Going through a third party cloud for information proved difficult when trying to route or determine the status of a repair job. With Power Apps and Azure, IPS can better track where everything is and get meaningful insight almost instantly.
Benefits
The custom Power Apps solution is moving IPS forward in its approach to the repair, reporting, and delivery processes. IPS is now realizing business benefits such as streamlined operations, a cohesive solution, more satisfied customers, and unified experiences across its 20+ locations.
Increased Productivity and Efficiency
According to Vice President of IT and Purchasing Scott Melzer, IPS has seen an estimated 15 percent uptick in productivity since implementing the Power Apps solution. Part of the job at IPS is to take several photos of motors in various states of repair, upload them, and categorize them. This was a very time-intensive process that involved digital cameras on the shop floor. Using Power Apps on a tablet device, photos are now named and stored immediately.
More Standardization
Under the old system, one of IPS’s biggest weaknesses was standardization across all 20 locations. Power Apps helps with this standardization effort by enabling overall consistency in processes, producing the same reports, titling forms similarly, and offering customers a similar experience regardless of which facility they visit. While still in development, IPS has a dream of offering their customers an application—built on Power Apps—that allows them to see exactly where IPS is in the repair process.
Unified Experience and Sterling Support
Oftentimes, once data is collected and entered, it must be edited. This process once had to be
done on a tablet, which proved to be inefficient and tedious. With the custom solution on
PowerApps, supervisors can edit data on a desktop, making it easy to generate final reports.
While there are still some issues such as SQL integration, the solution is being improved
every day. IPS likes the Power Apps solution because of the good UI, unified experiences, and
the ability to run the app on phones, tablets, or desktops. With the increased standardization,
unification, and “amazing support from Microsoft”, IPS feels like they've gained a 10-year
competitive edge by implementing Confluent's custom Power Apps solution.
Learn More about Custom Solutions for your Complex Processes?
Let's explore the possibilities together. Whether you're assessing options or ready to leverage your data, we will help you evaluate your current environment and consider the next steps.
​
Let’s talk about how we can help you turn ideas into impact.