Sudhakar Murthy, Head, Specialist Services Group, Embassy Services Pvt Ltd
The immense scale of warehouse FM necessitates the use of robust digital solutions that can improve workflow efficiency. Sudhakar Murthy, Head, Specialist Services Group, Embassy Services Pvt Ltd writes about E Spectrum, a set of multiple tools designed for various requirements of facility management for different categories.
Time and task management
Beacon-based workforce management is one of the tools to monitor & measure task status and time tracking. Beacon is a device based on Bluetooth technology wherein tasks will be scheduled as per requirement at the backend. When a technician enters the specific location for carrying out a task along with the mobile device, the beacon device will be detected in the mobile device and the respective checklist will be shown.
Once the task is completed and submitted, time taken to complete the task is recorded. Reports can be downloaded and analysed for evaluating the time taken for a specific task, time between multiple tasks, task efficiency, etc.
Every equipment and activity will have a pre-scheduled task (hourly/daily/weekly/monthly) as per requirements. The respective checklist will be tagged to the respective task. In the mobile app, all pending tasks, completed and missed tasks will be listed as per time order. Technicians scan the NFC/QR code of the respective asset and complete the task. In the dashboard, all tasks’ scheduled timing and completed time can be tracked. This will help enhance operational efficiency.
IoT based sensors and devices
IoT Smart devices suitable for warehousing facilities will be predominantly on energy meters and temperature & humidity sensors. Energy meters can be integrated into the cloud-based platform wirelessly, using Sim-based/Lora-based technology and can be used to show the real-time usage pattern and performance index, which will further be used to perform analytics for optimisation.
Smart sensors (temperature & humidity) are used in critical environments like data centres and cold storage warehouses. Multiple sensors can be deployed and connected to cloud dashboards to remotely monitor the conditions across environments.
Digital dashboards and warehousing
A high-end interactive dashboard has been created and can be viewed both in the webpage and mobile app. Logics have been created in the app to trigger SMS and email alerts once threshold limits are reached. Complaint tickets will be created automatically for every trigger and assigned to the respective team for addresal. Escalation system will be provided as per the defined SLA for completing the tickets.
All types of logbook readings and checklist details can be collected and stored, and reports can be generated. This can be configured for any type of task like maintenance & engineering, housekeeping, etc. Dashboards will show the overall status of the tasks completed/pending/missed. In the reports, comparison of asset-wise data is also possible to enhance the analytics.