In close collaboration with the SAP AppHaus Network member Trifork Smart Enterprise, Vestas leveraged SAP Business Technology Platform to build “One Field Service”, a suite of task-at-hand oriented apps that empower Vestas’ field service technicians to swiftly and efficiently execute tasks while providing relevant information in its appropriate context.
Founded in 1945, Vestas is the energy industry’s global partner on sustainable energy solutions. The company designs, manufactures, installs, and services wind turbines across the globe. With more than 132 gigawatt of wind turbines in 83 countries, Vestas has installed more wind power than anyone else on this globe. While delivering best-in-class wind power solutions, making the world a more sustainable place is one of the key purposes why Vestas’ more than 29.000 employees come to work every day.
In close collaboration with our SAP AppHaus Network member Trifork Smart Enterprise, Vestas leveraged SAP Business Technology Platform to consolidate the essential functions of more than 40 IT-systems into a coherent and efficient portfolio of four mobile apps. This new digital platform called “One Field Service” ties together the tasks of around 10.000 field service technicians, being responsible for monitoring, servicing and repairing thousands of turbines all over the world. As a result, the four new, user-centric mobile applications save Vestas on average 400.000 working hours globally per year.
Running through SAP’s Human-Centered Approach to Innovation
While applying SAP’s Human-Centered Approach to Innovation as an overarching innovation methodology, Trifork firstly focused on gaining a deep understanding of Vestas’ contemporary challenges. The research phases included visiting four countries and conducting more than 20 end user interviews. Vestas’ service business grows rapidly – and so does the number of field service technicians. More than 80.000 wind turbines around the world are serviced and monitored 24/7 by around 10.000 field service technicians. This increases the demand to optimize service processes by enabling field service technicians to access and maintain data around the globe while simply using their Apple devices. It further requires the provision of real-time data and efficient data analysis to technicians. During the workshops, the user journey was elaborated holistically, enabling a human-centered experience that goes beyond visually appealing, personalized and intuitive user interfaces.
“One Field Service” fuels Vestas’ global expansion
With “One Field Service”, a suite of task-at-hand apps leveraging SAP Business Technology Platform, Trifork enables Vestas to execute best-class turbine service and maintenance. The suite runs on the SAP Extension Suite and replaces over 40 legacy systems. For example, “Turbine Info”, representing one of the suite’s apps, builds on SAP Plant Maintenance and utilizes the in-memory capabilities of SAP HANA, enabling the delivery of big amounts of data to mobile devices. SAP Analytics Cloud takes care of the data analysis, processing and visualization. Finally, “One Field Service” enables a seamless and high performing SAP integration with full offline capabilities. What areas do the four new apps cover? What areas do the four new apps cover?
1 - My Tasks
The first app of the suite “My Tasks” provides field service access to SAP maintenance orders. Completed tasks, used material as well as tools applied can be documented. What’s more, on top of many more functionalities, technicians can also create maintenance notifications.
2 - My Time
“My Time” enables the Vestas technicians to register the time spent on specific maintenance orders but also vacation, sick leaves or internal tasks. The app also supports time registration sharing between colleagues, eliminating the need to enter multiple identical time registrations for a single project.
3 - Parts & Tools
The third application of the suite makes sure that field service technicians are permanently equipped with materials and supplies they need to perform their daily tasks. “Parts & Tools” completely and transparently maps SAP processes, like transportation of supplies from the central warehouse to service cars.
4 – Turbine Info
Finally, “Turbine Info” provides basic information as well as historical and real-time data for selected turbines. Important captured and processed data are, for example, temperature, speed and productivity. The app also informs technicians about past maintenance orders from SAP, including the exact activities as well as the material used.
About 400k hours saved & 80k turbines serviced by 10k technicians globally
These four helpful apps were developed by Trifork Smart Enterprise within only ten months. Vestas’ technicians, having the four apps in their pockets, can now better focus on their tasks, not having to go through numerous checklists, applications or other artifacts. A user adoption rate of 99% across different ages and backgrounds results from the intuitive user interface, using SAP Fiori, and the appealing Apple hardware. Updating info boards and other 3rd party local systems to ensure data synchronization across platforms is no longer necessary. Additionally, the offline capabilities service and maintenance can still be facilitated in vast areas with a poor network coverage.
The SAP AppHaus Network is incredibly proud to present Trifork’s project with Vestas as a proof point for making innovation real. It not only proves the innovative value of SAP Business Technology Platform and the synergy utilized from the combination of SAP software with appealing Apple hardware. These results seem to speak for themselves and show how powerful SAP’s Human-Centered Approach to Innovation is. Its mindset and the included tools really tap the full potential of SAP Business Technology Platform and develop solutions that end users really love. And this finally creates profound business impact.