The University of Texas Medical Branch is using IBM enterprise asset management software Maximo Everyplace to gain intelligence on thousands of physical assets across its campus via mobile.

The software is available to run on the browsers of the Apple iPhone and iPad, and Android-based phones. The new software replaces paper reports while helping organizations better manage and maintain their campuses, cities, water systems, rail lines, roadways and other infrastructure.

?Improving patient care is our top priority,? said David Reynolds, director, of fixed assets and reliability systems at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX. ?Working with IBM enables us to gain insight to ensure our medical equipment is optimized and that all of our assets are accounted for.

?This service enables us to log and respond to requests throughout the campus and provides us more visibility into the lifecycle of our most important assets, in turn improving the work environment and quality of care at our facilities,? he said. 

Maintaining the campus
The University of Texas Medical Branch is an academic medical center. It uses IBM Maximo software to maintain its 84-acre campus of more than 160 buildings to quickly identify assets in need of maintenance, saving time, addressing maintenance issues and expediting and streamlining reporting.

IBM software already helps more than 6,000 organizations around the world track, monitor and manage millions of physical assets.  

Maintenance staff in the field has traditionally worked from paper copies of work orders.

The new software provides real-time information at their fingertips across the territory they need to maintain such as miles of track, hundreds of buildings on acres of campuses or thousands of devices spread throughout a facility. 

Greater efficiency
The IBM Maximo Everyplace software displays job plans, location of assets, maintenance history, work-order tracking and service requests.

The functionality can help companies deliver better preventative maintenance, speed repairs quickly before impacting operations and optimize the usage of parts to ensure greater efficiency.

?We have customers from many different industries and have a more traditional mobile access to our product,? said Don Busiek, program director at Maximo strategy and product management at IBM, Armonk, NY. ?We?re seeing no matter where you go, people are texting and checking email, so why not enable that for access to Maximo?

?I think that is really why we?ve seen this really take off,? he said.

All the benefits enterprises currently gain from using IBM Maximo software are enhanced through use of Maximo Everyplace on mobile devices.

The new software provides mobile access through Wi-Fi, cellular or satellite, so there is no need to carry a separate mobile device.

Since it is Web-based, no additional software needs to be downloaded to the device, and administrators can choose which capabilities are displayed on screen to fit individual preferences.

Through Maximo Application Designer, the administrator has the ability to customize the mobile view of Maximo screens for each iPhone or Android depending on the type of functions the end-user requires.

?With Maximo Everyplace, we are taking advantage of one of the trends in the mobile market,? said Dave Gasdia, manager of Maximo product architecture at IBM. ?Nowadays everyone has two or three phones, [so] what we?re trying to do is extend Maximo to the devices that people are using today.

?We?re taking advantage of the robustness of a browser on a smartphone,? he said. ?We are also taking advantage of the trends in the mobile space to allow people to work smarter.?