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  • Terence Rei
    • Jul 8, 2016

Mavava Solar


  1. Solar powered water heating for domestic and commercial premises

  2. Customers include local authorities, governments, Eskom (national electricity supplier)

INDUSTRY

Engineering

REGION

Johannesburg, South Africa

GOALS

  1. Improve Field Service Management

  2. Reduce Operating Costs

  3. Improve Productivity

SPECIFIC CHALLENGE

  1. Enable mobile field teams with real-time mobile operations management

  2. Carry out highly reliable installations within tight timeframes

  3. Implement system within short time scale

  4. Integrate with existing systems

BENEFITS

  1. Automated Processes

  2. Improved Customer Asset Data

  3. Off-the-shelf Low Cost Solution

  4. Implemented On Time and Below Budget

  5. Positive Return on Investment

Solar power is one of the most effective renewable energy sources available. By implementing it in water heating, Eskom (South Africa’s national power distribution operator) is targeting one of the most power-intensive household activities for maximum power saving effect.

To actively encourage and promote the widespread implementation of solar water heating, Eskom has rolled out a large-scale solar water heating programme. This programme assists energy consumers by rebating part of the cost of purchase of SABS tested solar water heaters. Mavava Solar is an Eskom approved supplier of solar powered water heating. They required a mobile workforce management system to effectively manage the process of validating customers (pre-survey to determine customer is a valid and metered Eskom user who qualifies for rebate) as well as the geyser installation itself. In addition they needed capture the asset details (serial number etc.) and create a barcode on the asset to track stock movement for inventory management as well as facilitating subsequent service activity. By using the bar codes to recover the most up to date asset information on specific geysers to their mobiles, field service engineers save a lot of time on service calls.

The solution had to be capable of scheduling and viewing work graphically, provide a complete audit trail of activity, and be deployed in the field on inexpensive devices. The scope requirement has been met successfully with predefined processes using the Forcelink solution. The net result is a dramatic improvement in efficiencies and a demonstrable impact on company costs.

FEATURES & BENEFITS

Workforce/Resource Management: Improved efficiency of field resources, 20%+ productivity improvement on jobs completed

Scan equipment: Asset capture, time and location, for full maintenance history

Meet Regulatory Standards: Reporting to Eskom standards for regulatory reporting requirements

Rapid Implementation:  Lower Costs, quicker installation – SaaS subscriber model meant no capital costs

Integrates with legacy and future systems:  Protection of past and future IT investments, export of data from Forcelink via standard formats

Scalability of Solution: Allow Mavava to expand usage as required, no practical limit on field resource numbers

Administration savings: Reduce administration costs by more than 50% by comparison with previous process[/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vcex_image_flexslider control_nav=”false” control_thumbs=”false” img_size=”full” caption=”true” caption_type=”title” caption_position=”bottomLeft” caption_width=”450px” thumbnail_link=”lightbox” lightbox_skin=”smooth” lightbox_title=”title” image_ids=”662,663,664,665,666,667,668,669″][/vc_column][/vc_row]