Maintenance 4.0 with Paledo
The WVG Group shows us how to introduce almost the entire range of Paledo functions at a large number of different locations, with completely different business areas and external digital interfaces, in turbo mode.
Westfälische Verkehrsgesellschaft (WVG) is the service and management company for several municipal transport companies in Westphalia. These include Regionalverkehr Münsterland GmbH (RVM), Regionalverkehr Ruhr-Lippe GmbH (RLG), Verkehrsgesellschaft Kreis Unna mbH (VKU), Verkehrsbetrieb Kipp GmbH (VBK) and Westfälische Landes-Eisenbahn GmbH (WLE).
The Westfälische Verkehrsgesellschaft mbH keeps local public transport in Westphalia running smoothly with more than 1,000 express, regional, taxi and city buses, transporting people safely to their destinations every day.
In addition, the WVG Group also offers services in national and international rail freight transport.
Company: WVG Group
Location: Münster, Germany
Paledo application areas: Paledo Base Module, Paledo App, Plant Layout, Spare Parts Management, Digital Forms, Work Scedule Calendar, Graphical Planning Board, Strategy Manager, Shift Book, Maintenance Management, Time Series Analysis, Dashboards, Reports & Analysis, Wheelset Database, Purchase Requisitions/OCI Integration, HU-SP, Interfaces, External Company E-mail Gateway
The WVG Group faces high expectations, which are set to rise even further in the future. After all, if local public transport is to replace car journeys, it must first and foremost be attractive.
Offering innovative mobility solutions while remaining economically viable is not always possible due to external influences (stakeholder interests) and the thinly populated transport area (8,600 km² of road network with 2.3 million inhabitants).
One factor that the WVG Group intends to actively leverage to improve economic efficiency is the digitalisation of maintenance processes. The aim is to reduce costs, which in turn will have a positive impact on passenger fares and the attractiveness of the WVG Group’s services.
Considerations regarding the digitisation of maintenance began in 2016, one year after the introduction of a group-wide ERP system. The introduction quickly revealed significant challenges for maintenance. Ever-increasing data gaps, growing problems and mounting discontent among maintenance workers ultimately prompted a change. In 2019, the WVG Group and Syntactix crossed paths at the VDV SAP User Conference in Münster.
Christian Lewe, project manager and initiator of maintenance digitisation at WVG, recalls: ‘Mr Fink gave an impeccable presentation at the time, which immediately convinced even the management, and the decision to introduce Paledo was made very quickly.’
The WVG Group initially introduced Paledo in 2021 to digitise its maintenance processes in the two workshops of Verkehrsgesellschaft Kreis Unna mbH (VKU). However, it didn’t stop there, as Christian Lewe explains: ‘Paledo’s ease of use and user-friendliness were so impressive that other departments in our company also wanted to use Paledo.’
Spurred on by WVG employees’ internal promotion of Paledo, the project was finally expanded in 2022 to the KOM Werkstätte, Eisenbahn Zentralwerkstätte, and Gebäude & Anlagen divisions, and in 2023 to the Haltestellenbau, Verkehrstelematik, and Infrastruktur departments. A key aspect was the short project duration of three months. This was achieved by keeping processes as consistent as possible. WVG has now been operating Paledo on a regular basis since June 2023. Christian Lewe comments: ‘But that’s not the end of it for us. We want to continue optimising and also implement other requirements.’
The WVG Group has achieved a great deal in these two and a half years. It has introduced Paledo Basic, the Paledo app and pretty much all of the Paledo modules that are available.
There are now 2 Paledo instances, 151 handhelds, 38 mobile tablet PCs and 43 Citrix users in use.
Paledo modules in use:
Maintenance achieves quickly noticeable added value with Paledo
Paledo was introduced in April 2021 with only a short preparation -time of three months for the IT infrastructure. In a first step, data was systematically recorded in Paledo and mobile systems were provided. This was done with the Paledo app, personally assigned handhelds and pool tablets. Christian Lewe describes the perceived effect as follows:
Operational processes and mobile provisioning are improved
Operational processes and mobile provisioning were also improved by replacing procedures and sub-procedures with checklists including maintenance information and documentation elements with automatic creation of follow-up orders. For mobile maintenance processing, employees call up the relevant checklist via the app, can then work through it point by point and have the manufacturer’s maintenance information directly available as an attachment in the checklist. ‘This has the advantage, for example, that a technician who is new or who does not regularly carry out maintenance work for us is always able to carry out tasks in accordance with the manufacturer’s specifications,’ says Christian Lewe.
Improved availability and utilisation of data
Another improvement concerns the availability and use of data. As part of the fuel data analysis, the Paledo time series module stores the current assignments of vehicles to districts and the corresponding fuel quantities and mileage. The calculations are then performed. Before Paledo, 12 employees were busy every month filling in Excel spreadsheets, which were then provided to German customs for verification. WVG’s goal is to automate this process.
Success factors of the project
Christian Lewe shares with us what is necessary for a successful project
But how did the WVG Group manage to introduce Paledo on such a large scale and in such a short time? Christian Lewe shares his formula for success with us:
„We involved everyone, even the mechanic in the workshop. He is important because he is the one who has to work with it. This meant we had a very high level of acceptance at the operational level.
Since public transport is generally very traditional, one of the key factors in WVG’s success was its willingness to rethink its own processes. During implementation, emphasis was placed on an agile, step-by-step approach: ‘Only when the workshop or technician came by and said everything was fine did we move on to the next step,’ says Christian Lewe. This enabled WVG to gain the necessary understanding and acceptance at all levels: ‘Even in IT, maintenance is now viewed differently; the whole structure has changed a fair bit.’
The desired result was also achieved by taking a radical approach. The focus was not on what other departments, such as Controlling or Financial Accounting, were doing. Instead, the focus was placed squarely on maintenance, as Christian Lewe describes:
„We said to ourselves, we’ll reduce everything to what maintenance requires and then we’ll see: what’s still missing, where do we still need to tick a box, where do we still need to implement a learning field. It works really well to implement a learning field with Paledo, it only takes five minutes. ’
Christian Lewe describes the introduction of Paledo as a great success. However, he adds that there is still a long way to go before digitalisation is complete. One area that is to be further pushed forward is the full networking of the main systems and equipment with Paledo (keyword: vehicle telemetry). Christian Lewe describes how maintenance is currently at the stage of digitisation between ‘making data available and using it’ and ‘networking and creating interfaces’.
The ultimate goal is to reach the final stage of digitalisation: automation. This involves moving away from preventive maintenance towards condition-based maintenance. Christian Lewe is confident that Paledo will enable them to achieve this goal of Maintenance 4.0.
But it is not only in the area of maintenance that digitalisation is being driven forward. Since autumn 2023, WVG has also been digitalising its warehouse management with the help of Paledo.
Christian Lewe sees the biggest challenge of digitalisation as getting employees to change their mindset, to stop thinking in terms of traditional processes and start thinking in terms of modern processes, and to commit to using them.
With Paledo, WVG is laying the foundation for achieving the company’s digitalisation goals, both technologically and at all levels of the company in the mindset of its employees.
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