"A Smart CMMS to win the challenge of global service" - Exclusive interview with Massimo Esposito, Siram Veolia Industry & Building Technical Office.

Exclusive interview with Massimo Esposito, Siram Veolia Industry & Building Technical Office
Maintenance & Asset Management source published by TIMglobal Media

For about a year Siram Veolia I&B has started a close collaboration with the software provider Siveco Group, implementing the Coswin 8i CMMS on its activities and using it for projects with customers. With the engineer Massimo Esposito we have explored the details of this synergy that is allowing the company to make enormous progresses and advance its cutting-edge technological development.

Engineer Esposito, can you describe us the activity of Siram Veolia Industry & Building and its role?
Siram Veolia Industry & Building is a company of the Siram Veolia Group. Its goal is to address the private market of Industry and Real Estate with a series of services aiming at promoting both sustainable growth and development, through the optimization of natural resources and the use of innovative maintenance solutions for asset management. The company is part of the Veolia Group, a French multinational, which in 2019 provided drinking water to 95 million people and managed wastewater for 67 million inhabitants, produced 45 million megawatt hours and converted 50 million tons of waste into new materials and energy.
Personally, I have been working in the Group since 2003. I entered as Head of Information Systems and IT contracts, thanks to my IT background.
Over the years I have held various roles and today I am in the Technical Office for innovation and development, with a particular focus on the industry part. We mostly turn to the defense industry sector (Leonardo above all), but we also have customers in the paper sector, in Food & Beverage, in manufacturing and in other large areas.
Our activity is organized in two main types of Global Service: one relating to general systems (compressed air, hot/cold, everything related to the life of the plant) and the other one for production. The latter is linked to the development of the final product and therefore technologically more advanced.

How did the collaboration with Siveco Group begin and why did you choose Coswin 8i?
In the early 2000s we already used Coswin8i and at that stage we were also distributors for various companies.Then, strategic changes led us to make other choices, relying on various providers and also on a CMMS of the parent company. They were all interesting solutions capable of performing well, but unfortunately revealed some limitations within more complex needs.
In 2019 we started a software selection that involved 9 systems, evaluated on 40 very stringent parameters. The winner was Coswin 8i, which proved to be superior to its competitors not only for the very high technological level - obviously increased today, compared to the first versions we had to deal with - but also for a whole series of features that went beyond the appearance purely technical, such as the constant support shown by Siveco Group in the test phase and the ability to solve the stringent customization needs required. With the same technological availability, in fact, the difference is often made by the reactivity of the partner. And in that moment with Coswin 8i we felt perfectly aligned.

Which assets do you submit to Coswin 8i management today?
Let's assume that, in fact, we were able to start releasing Coswin 8i on the systems only from May 2020, in full lockdown, with the first months entirely dedicated to the configuration. It was, therefore, a challenge within the challenge. Starting such a complex system during such a period could have seemed crazy. We had to remotely restructure all the training methodologies for onsite operators who had never seen the new tool or used the handheld with the Coswin Nom@d solution before. We also had to give up the phase of daily physical support with the operators, a crucial part of the preliminary procedures to get to know the different peculiarities of the machines well.
However, thanks also to the constant support of Siveco Group, we have overcome this double leap in the dark, by, first of all managing the release of the software on the assets of the production plants, which are main priority, and now we are starting to launch it also on the general plants.

About the Coswin Nom@d mobile module, what are the main advantages of using it?
The presence of Coswin Nom@d was one of the discriminating elements that led us to choose Coswin 8i: we were looking for a system equipped with a real mobile component, and which was not limited to having a simple "App", as if it were a version reduced of the CMMS. When we examined the Coswin Noma@d, we had assigned it a very high technological score. Starting with the idea of entrusting one to a team, with four or five PDAs for each site, it was so effective that we had to assign one to
each operator, given the immediate benefits for productivity. Just think of how much the use of paper has been reduced compared to the past and how much more can be done now, eliminating the bureaucratic steps such as filling in the work orders by hand, returning to the office to deliver them to an employee who then has to deal with upload them to the CMMS etc., but also tracking the activity in real time, eliminating possible data loading errors, and above all being able to offer the customer timely and global responses on performance. Thanks to Coswin Nom@d, today we can record on the handheld a myriad of new data related to failures, defects, etc., and allow the user to have immediate feedback.

Is the use of paper still very widely in the realities you have to do with? How does the interlocutor accompany the transition towards the digital?
It is done in small steps. It is true, in many cases, paper is still a dominant tool, but when we introduce ourselves to the customer with this solution, which demonstrates the advantages of digitalization in the field, our interlocutors immediately realize the opportunities. It should be emphasized that the companies we work with are however all very receptive to technological innovations. In this sense, we represent the definitive push to change pace: very often it happens that they ask us to test Coswin 8i for their business, convinced by the exceptional level of engineering with which it has been implemented (also the result of Siram's thirty years of experience in maintenance).

Are there any other projects you are planning or developing with Siveco Group and Coswin 8i?
First of all we want to carry on the collaboration with Siveco Group on all the contracts we have, thanks to the important results. But above all, we are starting some Smart Maintenance projects together, thanks to the predisposition of Coswin 8i for IoT and BIM, on which Veolia is pushing a lot. With previous CMMS this was not feasible. Today, however, we are able to start proactive maintenance activities.
Thanks to Coswin 8i we were able to set up the WCM in Leonardo, to everyone's great satisfaction. We were able to implement two key tools such as the Machine Ledger and the Emergency Workorders, with extreme levels of detail, highly appreciated by the customer. In short, we have a tool that allows us to finally organize all those activities that we thought impossible years ago, allowing us to truly project ourselves into the future with enthusiasm.

To read the original article in Italian, click on the link: https://www.manutenzione-online.com/articolo/un-cmms-smart-per-vincere-la-sfida-del-global-service/