Time for CPOs to adopt CMMS?
Jasjeet Singh
Senior Principal Consultant [Sustainable Transport | Infrastructure Electrification | Cyber Resilience]
Do these headlines get your attention?
It made me ask myself a simple question. Is the EV charging infrastructure already failing or am I missing something? One thing I realised quickly was, the infrastructure is not necessarily failing but the maintenance strategy is definitely failing. The reliability of charging equipment will increase but the unreliability of system as a whole is also likely to rocket!
Good Parts Bad System: From Range Anxiety to Charger Anxiety
EV chargers are more complex than we give them credit for. They have to interact with the customer, provide and manage the electric charge, monitor several parameters, perform safety functions and process the payments. They have to link to apps, CPOs communication networks, grid etc. So like a parking machine but with a powerful socket, a tablet computer and mobile telephone built in! And these machines break; data suggests they break a lot!
It became apparent that as the number and type of chargers being operated by a CPO increases, their ability to effectively manage maintenance takes a hit. This sounded familiar. The days before we had SAP (and others!) in our maintenance quiver. Hence, the question - Should CPOs adopt a Computerised Maintenance Management System (CMMS)? With all the fancy AI, perhaps that is inevitable progression? (Intentionally ignoring cyber safety for the mo - sorry!)
The result - Consumers are struggling. Early adopters, agnostics and antagonists alike. Enter Charger Anxiety...
The Culprits
The reasons for a charger failing is not what I was looking at; it was what happens when it fails. Why is downtime so significant? Apathy or something more? Researching (google..ing) and reading some reports, the logic became a little less fuzzy. The "findings" indicated the charger maintenance is poor, mainly because of three reasons (not to say there aren't more..)
Outdated Maintenance Management Practices
Unbelievably, a significant proportion of maintenance scheduling, task assignment, progress tracking etc. is still being done manually. Old Skool!
When the operating platform identifies a broken down charger, nothing much happens until someone notices it. Then emails begin to flow and a maintenance ticket is raised. The technician is normally explained the 'fault' over a telephone call or an email. This is an iterative process until such time that the message is clearer.
CPOs are spending time and resources on manually sorting out a problem. Figuring out asset faults, arranging and dispatching maintenance orders, liaising with contracting companies, OEMs, land owners etc. All this increases the downtime.
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It is worth noting that whilst EV chargers run on an integrated operating system of some sorts, it only communicates operational status data to the CPO and maybe perform remote diagnostics. It does nothing to enable maintenance optimisation. These were not engineered for that!
What a growing CPO needs is a system that can help them to reduce repair and maintenance time, and hence increase availability. Traditionally, a CMMS is pretty useful tool here.
Poor Data Analytics and Business Intelligence
CPOs are not recording and maintaining a good data repository of charger reliability stats. They relay on manual reporting which becomes difficult as the number and types of chargers in their portfolio increases.
Uptime regulations for public chargers are not too far in the future and CPOs need to up their game!?
CPOs should have a platform that accurately record and analyse charger performance data. This may include failure types, failure times, time to identify a failure, time taken to return to service, peak demands etc. (including all those Ms - MRT, MTTR, MTBF etc.)
The data analytics can then tell them which charger model fails most often, when is it likely to fail, whihc parts require replacing most often, which geographic location is performing poorly in terms of uptime.
Armed with this information, a well honed maintenance strategy could be developed. This should keep the downtime in check.
Field Operations Blindness
Surprisingly, many CPOs have exceptionally poor visibility of maintenance activity in the field. Simple questions such as which machine is down, when did it go down, who is supposed to attend the charger location etc. go unanswered unless several phone calls are made.
How can an effective maintenance strategy and programme be developed without such key information? ?
A 20/20 vision of the charging network health is essential! You can't fix what you don't know. Complete sub-contracting to their parties is not an answer!
So, what should a CPO do?
Simply, learn from other businesses who have similar business models. For improving all aspects of maintenance, the effort required will only increase with the portfolio size. Add to this supply chain issues, we might have a tricky one at hand!
Suggestion - As your CPO business grows, start investing in a good CMMS platform, and training. It will make your life much easier!