The mobility challenge of APC-MGE in France: the planning of 30,000 annual interventions!

Schneider Electric announced the partnership of APC (American Power Conversion) and MGE UPS Systems in
a new division: « Critical Power and Cooling Services » of Schneider Electric. The division offers the most comprehensive
range of solutions, meant to secure critical domestic and industrial computer systems and applications.
Some figures...:

• 2.4 billion Euros turnover
• 12,000 employees
  
• Present in more than 100 countries

World Number 1 for the services related to energy efficiency, APC-MGE must respond 24/7 with a high level quality to the clients’ requests for assistance, resulting in high availability of its technical teams. With more than 30 000 annual interventions, APC-MGE must therefore be able to rely on a tool taking in account all the necessary parameters to efficiently reply to the clients inquiries. All client-intervening service on the field is indeed facing a double problem:

• Optimize the planning of the maintenance visits, depending on the contractual agreement, the availability of the competent teams and to avoid the unproductive situations (to avoid that 2 technicians do not cross each other, ...)
• Respond with maximum responsiveness to the disturbances of planning that represent the failures and other urgent interventions. APC-MGE has therefore searched a solution which allows maximizing the electric availability, all while ensuring the criticality of the loads.

The adapted response of GEOCONCEPT: Opti-Time

In October 2006, APC-MGE chose GEOCONCEPT SA to provide a tool to help in the planning of the introduction of its Client Service: the solution Opti-Time. It allows optimizing the agendas of intervention, reducing the « lost » time in unnecessary travel.

APC-MGE therefore has today a reliable tool which guides the supervisors (1 for 12 technicians) in the management of planning, taking in account a technician for each intervention:

• Technical competence
• Acquired experience
• Geographical proximity
•  Availability
• Specifies the site

GEOCONCEPT offers hence a concrete response to the challenge of APC-MGE with its concept of Geoptimization, which allows making reliable and to control the response time of the intervention of the mobile forces.

Planning tools, geographic components and of optimization, modules of supervision... So many bricks of the Opti-Time software solution contribute to the optimization of interventions and of a greater availability of the teams. The solution indeed
reduces the MTTR (Mean Time To Repair) while improving the MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) through planned preventive visits according to the client requirements. APC-MGE is also on Eco-citizen way to limit CO2 emissions by reducing travel distances.

Optimized interventions for a greater availability of teams

The supervisors heading the planning of interventions have Opti-Time, a solution of optimization which makes their work more effective, from operations to reporting. They can however plan more interventions, with the productivity gains on the mileage and the time between the meetings. « The technicians spend more time at the client’s place and a little less in their car. The relation hence with them becomes more fluid, strong, including the time of stress, when the challenges of an eventual obstacle of the protected load can generate errors », announces Paul-François Cattier, Director APC-MGE France.

Combining ease of use and performance, the solution Opti-Time of GEOCONCEPT perfectly responds to the expectations of APC-MGE. « Thanks to an efficient planning of our interventions, our clients benefit from the shortest period of intervention on the market throughout France » concluded Paul-François Cattier. The tool of GEOCONCEPT will soon be deployed in other countries with substantial maintenance teams such as Germany, Spain or China.